Bloomberg UK Transport Secretary Mark Harper has given rail companies permission to make a new offer to unions this week in a bid to ending strikes. A “revised mandate” had been given to rail companies to go into negotiations in the coming days and it’s important to give the two sides space “to try and reach a conclusion,” Harper …

Bloomberg High inflation, rising interest rates and increased economic uncertainty may be telegraphing a further slowdown in US new household formation during the closing months of 2022. A slowdown in home sales due to high mortgage rates, coupled with the latest figures from RealPage Market Analytics that show a sharp decline in apartment demand — the first since 2009 — …

  Bloomberg China’s imports of integrated circuits declined in 2022 for the first time in almost two decades. Imports of ICs fell 15% last year to 538.4 billion units from 635.6 billion units in 2021, according to data from General Administration of Customs released Friday. That’s the first annual drop since at least 2004 when Bloomberg started tracking the data. …