The 10 biggest stories on Tuesday December 15

Oil price sinks below $37 a barrel; StanChart axes senior bankers in energy M&A team; Rise in UK minimum wage will cost businesses more than £1bn

The drop in price of crude oil reflects a loss of confidence in the market after the latest meeting of Opec, where ministers from oil-producing states failed to cut back supply (Corbis)

1. Brent crude oil was cents away from crisis levels overnight after slipping below $37 a barrel. Brent, which is used as an international benchmark, fell to a low of $36.33 in US trading hours, skimming lows of $36.20 a barrel not seen since the 2008 financial crisis, before recovering to $37.63

2. The Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates on Wednesday - its first rise for more than a decade.

3. Engineering group Aveva has called off talks with Schneider Electric after the two firms decided a merger would create “significant” challenges.

4. Shareholders pressure Yahoo to take other alternatives to the Alibaba spin-off. SpringOwl, a New York hedge fund, has sent a 99-page presentation to Yahoo's board that calls for the company to lay off 9,000 of its 10,700 workers and eliminate free food for employees to help save $2bn annually, the Telegraph reports.

5. Chancellor George Osborne's decision to raise minimum wages from next year will prove to be expensive for private employers. It will affect 1.7 million employees in the private sector, according to The Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC), and cost over a billion pounds annually.

6. Standard Chartered has cut at least half a dozen oil and gas advisory banking roles in recent weeks, ending an eight-year attempt to build a global energy M&A team, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

7. The struggling Japanese electronics giant Toshiba is in the “final stages” of a move to cut 7,000 jobs, according to Nikkei. Toshiba may consider ending production of TV sets, to plug losses in its consumer products unit.

8. Rio Tinto locked in $4.4 billion (2.9 billion pounds) in financing on Tuesday to fund a massive expansion of a copper mine in Mongolia and a final decision whether to proceed with construction will be made in the first half of 2016.

9. Apple opened a secret production laboratory in northern Taiwan where engineers are developing new display technologies. The building in Longtan has at least 50 engineers and other workers creating new screens for devices including iPhones and iPads, Bloomberg reports.

10. ESA astronaut Major Tim Peake will make history when he becomes the first Briton to serve a mission on the International Space Station. An important step and proof of UK’s growing capability in space innovation and research – a sector that has double in value to £11.8 billion in seven years and employs more than 37,000 people in the UK, City AM reports.