A French swoop on Invensys would call time on a British engineer that traces its orgins back to the 19th century.

Shares in Invensys tumbled by 14 per cent yesterday, after it was forced to make an embarrassing U-turn and admit US giant Emerson had made a £2bn-plus bid approach but gone away.

Top official admits error but denies lying to MPs after bankers avoided multimillion pound bill

Almost half a billion pounds was wasted in a project to build fire control rooms that was flawed from the start because it failed to win the support of fire and rescue services.

Britain's co-operative sector outperformed the wider UK economy last year in a boost for businesses owned by their employees or customers. Co-operatives UK said the combined turnover of mutual organisations rose 4.4 per cent last year. The biggest growth was at employee-owned firms such as John Lewis and Suma Wholefoods, while the customer-owned Co-operative Group's £14bn revenue made it the biggest business.