The 10 biggest business stories on Monday December 14

Chinese tycoon Guo Guangchang appears in public for first time ; Zuma hires third finance chief in a week; Nurofen owner Reckitt Benckiser ordered to stop selling misleading painkillers

President Jacob Zuma appointed Pravin Gordhan as finance minister on Sunday (Getty)

1. Alibaba has agreed to pay HK$2.06 billion ($265.8 million) to acquire Hong Kong's flagship English-language newspaper the South China Morning Post, the newspaper group said in a statement on Monday.

2. The billionaire chairman of Fosun Group, dubbed the Warren Buffet of China, re-emerged Monday after he disappeared from public view in connection with an investigation by authorities, Chinese media said.

3. The UK government is considering nationalising the nuclear submarine business of Rolls-Royce, which powers its Trident missile deterrent system, the Financial Times reported.

4. Royal Dutch Shell and BG have received approval from the Chinese authorities for the £47 billion mega-merger to go ahead

5. Arms manufacturers in North America and Western Europe dominated international arms sales in 2014, but their market share dropped while Russian and Asian companies saw theirs rise, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported Monday.

6. President Jacob Zuma appointed Pravin Gordhan as finance minister on Sunday, in a dramatic U-turn that gave South Africa its third finance chief in a week after a selling frenzy in the markets.

7. The chief executive of Greene King, Rooney Anand, has been appointed as non-executive director and senior independent director of the supermarket Morrisons. Anand, will join the board from 1 January.

8. An Australian court ordered Reckitt Benckiser on Monday to pull several of its Nurofen pain relief products from the market, saying the British firm had misled consumers by marketing identical products for different types of pain.

9. Central London house prices will stagnate next year, as predicted by Rightmove.

10. Twitter has issued its first ever warning about a possible hack by state-sponsored actors, the Financial Times reports. Twitter sent a warning email to users who may have been affected, stating that the hackers may have been trying to obtain phone numbers, email addresses, and IP addresses.