The 10 biggest business stories on Friday January 22

Asia stocks rebound; Christine Lagarde confirms intention to run for second IMF term; the European Union is “falling apart”, American financier George Soros warned

Stocks in Hong Kong plummeted this month. China is making a difficult transition from an export- and investment-led recovery to growth based more on domestic consumption (Getty)

1. Asian stocks continue their global recovery. Markets in Asia have rallied, picking up on a rebound in oil prices and a strong lead from the US and Europe. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 jumped 5.9 per cent to close at 16,958.53, after hitting at 15-month low the previous day. Shanghai Composite gained 0.8 per cent to 2,901.32 points, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 2.2 per cent to 18,950.19 points.

2. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Friday she will run for a second term. “I am candidate to a new mandate. I was honoured to receive from the start of the process the backing of France, Britain, Germany, China, Korea,” she told France 2 television in an interview from Davos.

3. The European Union is “falling apart”, American financier George Soros warned as part of wide-ranging remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

4. Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, is stepping up its investment plans across Europe, the Financial Times reports. In the UK, Amazon plans to employ a further 2,500 people this year, in a range of functions across its new London head office, three R&D centres and 10 warehouses. It follows the creation of 10,000 new jobs in Europe throughout 2015, taking its workforce well above 40,000.

5. HSBC takes advice from former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the future location of its headquarters even as the bank’s board has ruled out a move to the US, Sky News reports.

6. Starbucks results disappointed investors. The US- based coffee shop said revenue rose nearly 12 per cent to $5.37 billion in its fiscal first quarter, generating a profit of $687 million, down 30 per cent from a year ago, the company announced after markets closed Thursday.

7. Former pharmaceuticals chief executive Martin Shkreli has said he would remain silent if called to testify at a congressional hearing on drug prices. The former hedge fund manager hit the headlines when his company raised the price of a life-saving drug by 5,000 per cent.

8. Google paid Apple $1 billion in 2014 just to keep its search engine as the default on the iPhone, Bloomberg reports. The search engine giant has an agreement with Apple that gives the iPhone maker a percentage of the revenue Google generates through the Apple device, an attorney for Oracle said at a Jan. 14 hearing in federal court.

9. Jaguar Land Rover is now UK's biggest carmaker taking the top spot from Nissan, which had held the position since 1999. JLR's production increased by 9 per cent year-on-year to 489,923 cars, surpassing Nissan whose production declined 4.7 per cent year-on-year to 476,589 in 2015.

10. EDF, French state-controlled utility which said on Thursday it plans up to 4,200 job cuts in France by 2018, plans to cut 6,000 jobs worldwide by 2019 and especially at its British unit EDF Energy, French financial daily Les Echos reported on Friday.