Liverpool have confirmed that United States basketball star LeBron James has become a minority stakeholder in the club after signing a deal with club owners Fenway Sports Group.

Cocoa prices nudged 32-year highs over $3,714 a tonne yesterday after Laurent Gbagbo, the incumbent president, decreed that the state would become the sole purchaser of cocoa in the world's top grower and handle its export.

The international market for company listings began the year in buoyant fashion, with the first two months of 2011 seeing more than $25bn raised in 193 deals, according to an Ernst & Young report.

E.ON is selling its British networks business to US power group PPL for £4bn as part of the German electricity giant's plans to pay down its debts and expand into new global markets.

Another 800,000 travellers will be flying every year by 2014, taking the total to 3.3 billion, according to the latest estimates from the International Air Transport Association (Iata).

More than 5 per cent was wiped off the market capitalisation of the consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser yesterday after its fourth-quarter results failed to meet City expectations.

Manufacturing industry is capable of leading the economy further out of recession during 2011, its trade body will say today, with strong demand for exports – from emerging markets particularly – set to provide a further filip to the sector.

Cocoa farmers on the small African island of São Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea used to struggle to make a living. They were getting a very low price as they had to sell their cocoa by the roadside to middle men.

HSBC has promoted capital markets veteran Samir Assaf to take over the multimillion-pound role as head of investment banking, replacing Stuart Gulliver who becomes group chief executive next month.

A retailer withdrew a toy pig from a children's farm set to avoid the risk of causing offence on religious grounds, it emerged today.

Profits rocketed more than fivefold at Triumph Motorcycles last year, as the British motorbike maker drove through better cost control and use of working capital.

Outlook Pity the modern chief executive. Most of us, on beginning a new job, take some time to settle in and then make any changes needed without fanfare. That's not good enough for the modern CEO: he or she has to launch a strategic review on day one at the company and, just a few months later, present a vision for its future that will transform its prospects for the better (regardless of whether or not those prospects were decent enough in the first place).

The Obama administration will tap Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and long-time critic of finance industry lending practices, to set up a new US regulator charged with cleaning up the banking industry.

Two supplements taken by millions of people for joint pain caused by arthritis do not work, according to research.