Toy manufacturer LEGO, famed for its colourful building blocks and elaborate designs, reports a 34% leap in sales to 5.86 billion Danish krona in the first half of the year

Specialist medicine maker Alliance Pharma says it is enjoying an “outstanding year” as acquisitions help its half-year sales soar 77% to £23.4 million

Thorntons boss Mike Davies is heading for the door, but a successor is lined up and is likely to be announced shortly

Australian brewer Foster’s rejects a A$2.7 billion offer from an unnamed private equity firm for its wine business, sparking hopes that it could now attract a full-scale takeover bid

Richemont, the group behind posh watches Cartier and Piaget, Montblanc pens and Chloe handbags, showed as its five-month sales beat expectations with a 37% jump in revenues

North Sea oil group Dana Petroleum bought £240million of assets which it says makes it more valuable than last week's £1.87 billion hostile takeover bid from Korea National Oil Corp

Energy sector support services group Cape posted a 17.5% rise in first-half profits and said it was restarting dividend payments and would look to return to London's main market in 2011

Housebuilder Barratt said wider economic fears and the lack of mortgage finance meant the market for new housing was still challenging as it reported a jump in profits

House prices edged ahead by 0.2% during August as activity in the property market remained subdued, figures show

Report by BP says the initial cause of the world’s worst oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was a “bad cement job” by a US company

Nearly a third of Britons are worried about the impact an interest rate rise would have on their finances

Banknote printing firm De La Rue said it had called in the Serious Fraud Office and braced investors for a £35 million profits blow after 'totally unacceptable' behaviour by some employees

Chancellor George Osborne warns Brussels not to meddle with Britain’s EU budget rebate as he hammers out a new deal to protect the City

The FSA moves to beef up its board by appointing Margaret Cole, the heavyweight head of enforcement and financial crime at the City regulator, to its executive team

Beer sales are stumbling across the country, but Greene King is on the up thanks to its quality food offering

Packaging and office products company DS Smith today said trading in the first quarter was encouraging, helped by progress in the fast moving consumer goods sector

British animal genetics firm Genus posts a 3% rise in full-year adjusted pretax profit as higher prices drove growth in Latin America

Silicon Valley technology giant Oracle has hired Mark Hurd, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard who resigned amid a scandal, as president

England's World Cup was a flop, but Sports Direct, the biggest seller of the team’s shirts, prospered