Independent record shops are to get a much-needed boost after chart compilers announced that they would launch a new sales countdown to support the stores' contribution to the music business.

US digital textbook rental service CourseSmart is launching in the UK today to coincide with The London Book Fair.

Last year it was Nike. Indonesian workers manufacturing for its Converse brand told undercover reporters that supervisors slap them in the face and kick them if they make mistakes. The mainly female workforce at the factory in Pou Chen makes 50 cents an hour, we learned, and those who file complaints can expect to be fired.

Expert tempts shoppers to look past the obvious and break stranglehold of discounted boring bottles

The Japanese electronics giant's new chief executive, Kazuo Hirai, has only been in the job two weeks, but he's already promising to cut 10,000 jobs

Britons' growing love for online shopping helped demand for parcel deliveries at UK Mail, the private post deliverer, leap 10 per cent in the first three months of this year.

HSBC’s global profits have risen to £13.8 billion, a 15 per cent annual rise and one of the healthiest profits ever reported by a British company.

Sir Victor Blank ("Business must start a giving revolution", 24 February) raises a timely issue but does not go far enough.

Job tsar's appointment raises fresh questions over David Cameron's choice of key advisers

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Kim Dotcom, the founder of the file-sharing website Megaupload, was released on bail yesterday after a New Zealand judge determined that the authorities have seized any funds he could have used to flee the country.

The company belonging to the back-to-work tsar, Emma Harrison, which is being looked at by Thames Valley Police in connection with allegations of fraud by employees, has been investigated nine times since 2005 by the Department for Work and Pensions.

The CBI is calling on the Government to overhaul the penalty system for excessive carbon emissions, branding its handling of the £1bn-a-year carbon reduction scheme as dishonest and "discredited" and demanding it is scrapped.

The best month for the public finances in four years offered some breathing space for Chancellor George Osborne today, a week after ratings agency Moody's threatened to strip the UK of its prized AAA rating.