The 10 biggest business stories on Thursday October 15

Netflix US subscriber growth disappoints; Tesco reveals £250m property deal; Music streaming site Deezer launches share sale

Telecity streams services like Netflix and Spotify (Getty)

1. Tesco is selling 14 developments sites for a total of £250 million.

2. Unilever the owner of Ben & Jerry’s and Wall’s brand, says that strong sales of ice cream were partly behind a 5.7 per cent rise in underlying sales growth in the third quarter. Good weather and “successful innovations” helped ice cream sales in southern Europe and growth in Turkey was also driven by ice cream.

3. WHSmith says high street sales in the second half were boosted by “the new phenomenon of 'colour therapy' for adults”.

4. Burberry first half sales remained unchanged as it suffers from China turn down in second half. The company said its profits will be in line with analysts who “recently updated their forecasts”

5. Inflation data, unemployment figures, manufacturing data from New York and Philidelphia, as well as oil and gas statistics are all due from 1.30 pm.

6. The French music-streaming service Deezer has announced more details of its stock market launch. It has set the price range for the initial public offering at a pretty wide €36.40 to €49.24, which would raise between €300 million and €466 million. The final price will be set on 27 October before trading starts on Euronext Paris on 30 October.

7. Tesla is rolling out its Autopilot function in a software update on Thursday, which will enable newer Tesla models to automatically steer, change lanes, and parallel park.

8. Netflix's international subscription base grew by 2.74 million during the third quarter, but the company blamed disappointing US subscriber growth on the transition to chip-based credit and debit cards, which require users to update their payment information online.

9. Office rents on the highest floors of London’s skyscrapers climbed about 11 per cent in the six months through June, but Hong Kong remains the priciest. Offices near the top of Hong Kong skyscrapers cost $255.50. London annual rents rose to $122 a square foot - the third most-expensive place to rent skyscraper space, level with Tokyo.

10. Twitter lured Google executive Omid Kordestani to become the social media company's executive chairman, the latest step in the company's turnaround efforts under Jack Dorsey, who last week was named permanent CEO