Dame Sharon White, the former chair of John Lewis, has been appointed as the European head of the Canadian public pension fund manager that holds investments in companies including Eurostar and Heathrow airport.

White, who stepped down as John Lewis chair in September, has been given the official title of managing director and head of Europe at Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and will start in January.

White, the shortest-serving chair in the history of the John Lewis Partnership, had been due to leave the retailer next February but stepped aside early to make way for former Tesco boss Jason Tarry.

The announcement of White’s decision to step down came a month after she announced that the group’s turnaround would take two years longer than planned and cost more money.

John Lewis ditched its annual staff bonus for the second time in three years in March last year, after the group slumped to a worse-than-expected £230m full-year loss.

Her tenure had been mired in controversy including a reported plan to dilute its employee-owned mutual model by selling a stake in the business to raise more than £1bn, which was shelved after she narrowly won a vote of confidence in which staff backed her to continue but expressed dismay at the retailer’s poor performance.

Lidl’s UK business has bounced back into profit after it slowed expansion in favour of improving existing stores, spurring a jump in sales to above £9bn.

The German-owned discounter, which is close to overtaking Morrisons to become the UK’s fifth-largest supermarket, said it had gained more than 300,000 new shoppers and 60% of Britons visited the chain at least once year.

Profits rebounded in the year to February as the group cut back investment, opening just one net new store, according to the accounts, compared with 45 in the previous year.

The company began slowing down the rate of new stores last year, after several years of frequent store openings. However, it plans to open 40 new outlets next year and 18 in the coming months.

The energy regulator has ordered power supplier E.ON Next to pay £14.5m in compensation to nearly 250,000 prepayment customers, after an investigation found “unacceptable” failures to pay credit they had on accounts or final bill payments they were owed.

Ofgem found that the customers were affected over an 18-month period from early 2021 to late last year by an error in E.ON Next’s billing system. About 100,000 of the affected accounts were also in credit.

Prepayment customers who transferred to another supplier or terminated their contract did not receive final bills within the required six-week period, and the gas and electricity supplier subsequently failed to make the required compensation payments of £30 or £60.

Because customers did not receive a final bill they were also unaware of any credit remaining on their accounts, worth an average of £51 per affected customer.

One of the UK’s biggest pension funds has lost more than £350m on a series of “calamitous” investments in incinerator power plants that are expected to go bust in the coming days.

The Guardian understands that Aviva Investors will put three incinerators into administration this week after pouring millions of pounds into what has been described as the country’s “dirtiest form of power generation”.

Aviva’s own accounts show that the three incinerator plants – in Hull in East Yorkshire, Boston in Lincolnshire and Barry in south Wales – accumulated loans totalling £480m from its investors between 2015 and 2023.

Aviva has written off £368m for the plants, which were originally intended to run on biomass waste wood and later converted to burn household waste, but which struggled to reach their targets.

HSBC is to launch its first UK “wealth centre” in London’s Mayfair district, offering more personalised banking services and exclusive events such as wine tastings as part of a drive to win more rich customers.

The lender will take up two floors of the 16-storey Smithson Tower at 25 St James’s Street – close to the Ritz Hotel and Fortnum & Mason department store – as part of a revamp of HSBC’s premier-tier bank service. Aimed at the sought-after “mass affluent” market, premier is a tier below private-banking clients and is targeted at customers with £100,000 to £2m in income, assets or deposits.

The 8,000 sq ft wealth centre, which is due to open by summer 2025, will give premier clients access to a concierge team, catering services and a barista coffee bar, alongside 12 high-spec meeting rooms with panoramic views of London to meet HSBC team of dedicated relationship bankers.

Santander UK has put aside £295m to cover potential payouts to car loan customers as the bank issued its first estimate of the financial fallout from the growing car loan mis-selling scandal.

The figures were released alongside the bank’s third-quarter results, which were delayed last month after a court of appeal ruling in October said it was unlawful for two lenders to have paid a “secret” commission to car dealers without borrowers’ knowledge.

The provision dented the bank’s pre-tax profits, which fell to £143m in the quarter, down from £413m in the second quarter.

Car lenders such as Santander UK had already been facing potential payouts over an Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) investigation into a specific type of commission payment, discretionary commission arrangements, that was banned in 2021.

Policymakers have been “left in the dark” by official jobs figures since the pandemic, which may have “lost” almost a million workers according to the thinktank Resolution Foundation.

In a report, the thinktank said the regular snapshot from the Office for National Statistics may have painted an “overly pessimistic” picture of the UK labour market since the pandemic.

The thinktank’s principal economist, Adam Corlett, says in the report that response rates to the key Labour Force Survey (LFS) have collapsed, from 39% in 2019 to just 13% last year.

There are concerns that workers may be less likely to respond to the survey than people who are economically inactive, potentially skewing the results.

Sterling rose after the higher-than-expected inflation figures were released, as did the yield – or interest rate – on government bonds.

The pound rose as much as 0.25%, and is now marginally higher at $1.2687.

Yields on two-year gilts, as UK government bonds are known, which are the most sensitive to interest rate expectations, rose more than 4 basis points to 4.456% and are now at 4.42%.

Ten-year and 30-year gilt yields rose by a similar amount, which mirrored a similar move in US government bonds, Treasuries.

Food price inflation edged higher to 1.9% from 1.8% in September, well down from the recent peak of 19.2% in March 2023, which was the highest annual ate for over 45 years.

Treasury chief secretary Darren Jones acknowledged there was “more to do” to ease cost of living pressure, as inflation increased to 2.3% in October from 1.7% in September.

Jones said:

We know that families across Britain are still struggling with the cost of living. That is why the budget last month focused on fixing the foundation of our economy so we can deliver change.

That includes boosting the national minimum wage, freezing fuel duty and protecting working people’s payslips from higher taxes. But we know there is more to do. That is why the government is focused on economic growth and investment so we can make every part of the country better off.

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.

Inflation in the UK picked up more than expected last month because of higher electricity and gas prices.

The consumer prices index rose at an annual rate of 2.3% in October, up from 1.7% in September. Economists had expected a rate of 2.2%.

Electricity prices rose by 7.7% in October, having fallen by 7.5% last year. Gas prices increased by 11.7% in October, compared with a 7% drop last year.

The energy price cap went up, and Ofgem, the regulator, estimates that for an average household paying by direct debit for dual fuel, this equates to £1,717, a rise of £149 on an annual bill.

The Agenda

• 4pm GMT: Bank of England deputy governor Dave Ramsden speaks

• 6pm GMT: European Central Bank vice president Luis de Guindos speaks