Business news and markets: live

Morning City briefing

08.13 Louise Armitstead has a roundup of this morning's corporate news in the City briefing morning email.

Asos continues to cement its position as one of British retail's big winners. The online fashion retailer has reported a 21pc jump in revenues in the past two months, taking its sakes to £182m for the past six months, up 32pc from last year. The group now has 8.2m customers - a 36pc rise from last year, more than half of whom are international buyers. Even so, Nick Roberterson has warned that Asos's earning margin with be reduced this year to about 6.5pc due to investments in warehousing in the UK and Germany and its new venture in China.

Berkeley Group has once again credited George Osborne's Help to Buy scheme with its continuing strong growth. In a trading update, the housebuilder has said it anticipates completing 30pc more houses this year than at the peak of the market in 2007. Cash on forward sales has risen to £1.9bn from £1.75bn in October, reflecting particularly strong demand in London and the South East.

In a preliminary statement, Cairn Energy has reported post-tax losses of $556m, down from a profit of $73m last year.

Rank Group has announced the resignation of Colin Child, its senior independent director, with immediate effect after just two years on the board.

Sainsbury's sales fall for first time in nine years

07.52 Some bad news for Sainsburys this morning. The supermarket has suffered its first decline in sales for nine years as competition in the supermarket industry heats up.

Our retail correspondent Graham Ruddick has the details:

The company reported that like-for-like sales fell by 3.1pc excluding fuel in the 10 weeks to March 15. The drop in sales ends a run of 36 consecutive quarters of sales growth under chief executive Justin King.

The Sainsbury's boss said the overall grocery industry is growing at the slowest pace since 2005, with shoppers enjoying a slowdown in food inflation.

Mr King said: Although some economic indicators are showing an improvement in the health of the economy, we expect the outlook for customers to continue to be challenging for the coming year.

"We remain confident that our differentiated offer, supported by 'value for values', Nectar data and Brand Match, will allow us to outperform our peers in the year ahead."

^{Sainsbury's like-for-like sales fell by 3.1pc excluding fuel in the ten weeks to March 15}

Asian shares up after Wall Street rally

07.45 Asian markets rose in Tuesday's trading following a Wall Street rally as traders shrugged off growing tensions between the West and Russia following Crimea's vote for Kremlin rule.

After the weekend vote, the result of which was widely expected, attention turned to economic matters. Better than expected US data provided support as investors await the Federal Reserve's latest policy meeting.

Tokyo rose 0.94pc, or 133.60 points, to 14,411.27, Seoul added 0.66pc, or 12.68 points, to close at 1,940.21 and Sydney advanced 0.51pc, or 27.0 points, to 5,344.6.

Shanghai closed flat, edging up 1.52 points to 2,025.20, and in late trade Hong Kong was 0.34pc higher.

Day ahead

07.30 Few things to look out for today.

Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, will deliver the annual Mais Lecture today when he will discuss his plans to overhaul the Bank’s operations.

The Governor is expected to ask Bank staff to work across its different committees and allocate more resources to its forecasting.

Last week he told MPs the shake up was needed in the wake of allegations about manipulation of the foreign exchange markets. A new deputy governor is also expected to be announced. Mr Carney is due to speak at 6pm and is holding a press conference at 7pm.

The Treasury Select Committee is holding a one-off session on the performance of the Royal Mint. In Europe, Angela Merkel is meeting Pedro Passos Coelho, the Portugeuse prime minister, in Berlin. And the US Federal Open Market Committee is starting a two-day meeting, its first under Janet Yellen, the new chairman of the Fed.

The FTSE 100 is expected to open slightly lower this morning.

Today's business stories

07.15 Here's what's leading our business pages this morning

• James Titcomb reports that Vodafone has hailed the opening of a new chapter in its history after agreeing a £6bn deal for Spanish cable operator Ono, the first since the sale of its $130bn (£78bn) US operations.

• Lousie Armitstead writes that business leaders have pleaded for the Chancellor to deliver “certainty and stability” in his Budget on Wednesday, warning that a raft of radical measures could backfire and damage confidence.

• Harry Wilson writes that the world’s largest international banks are still too big to fail and resolving this issue remains the biggest problem for global regulators , according to the top Bank of England official in charge of financial stability.

Good morning

07.00 Good morning and welcome to our daily business and markets live blog, your one stop shop for all the breaking business stories of the day.

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