The Business Matrix: Wednesday 29 January

Strong market lifts British Land

British Land, whose portfolio includes the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield, said the UK property market had a strong final quarter, with London strengthening further and domestic and international investment spreading out into regional markets. Its like-for-like occupancy rose 0.3 per cent to 97.1 per cent.

Morrisons' choice of Dymond flawed

Morrisons was left red-faced after a senior executive drafted in to run the supermarket's new website quit less than a month into the job. George Dymond, hired from Australian supermarket chain Coles, was to run the day-to-day operations of the website, which took deliveries for the first time this month in a deal with Ocado.

1,000 jobs to be cut at Lloyds

Lloyds Banking Group is shedding 1,080 jobs as part of its 2011 plan to deliver £1.5bn in annual cost cuts. The bank, 33 per cent owned by the taxpayer, said the jobs were going in its retail, risk, operations and commercial banking divisions. It said in 2011 the cost-savings plan would result in 15,000 positions being axed.

Galliford Try wins £55m in contracts

Galliford Try has won new affordable housing and extra care contracts worth a combined £55.2m. The group has been chosen for new work by long-term client the ExtraCare Charitable Trust, as well as a project for Central Bedfordshire Council and the Creechbarrow development project in the south-west.

Bank raises rates to fight inflation

India's central bank has approved a rise in interest rates, from 7.75 per cent to 8 per cent, to fight inflation. "We have to watch to see how the medicine works along with the weak state of the economy as well as the stabilisation of the rupee," the bank governor Raghuram Rajan said.

BNP admits bid to rig rates

The French bank BNP Paribas has made a "voluntary" donation of A$1m (£531,000) after shopping itself to the Australian regulators over staff who allegedly tried to manipulate the local interbank interest rate. The bank also said a "small number" of staff in its Singapore office had left.

Terror risk grows at sports events

Brazil and Russia, the countries hosting the World Cup and Winter Olympics, are the two areas where insurer AON sees heightened risk of terrorist attacks and civil unrest in its annual update. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most at-risk area.

US fines Mexican bank Banorte

Wall Street watchdog Finra has fined Mexico's fourth largest bank, Banorte, for lax money-laundering controls. Finra said a US unit of Banorte opened an account for a customer with alleged ties to a drug cartel and did not detect the rapid movement of $28m in and out of it.

Turkey pledges to act over currency

Turkey's central bank governor raised hopes of an emergency rate hike in the face of opposition from Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, denying he was hostage to political pressures and vowing to fight rising inflation and a tumbling lira.

Mattioli Woods earns 13% boost

The Leicester-based wealth management and employee benefits firm Mattioli Woods posted a 13.5 per cent rise in underlying profits to £2.9m for the six months to 30 November after seeing client assets rise by a third to £4.3bn.