At the end of October the Pension Protection Fund announced that it had come to an agreement with Monarch Airlines and the Pensions Regulator to accept the Monarch Airlines Limited Retirement Benefit Scheme into a PPF assessment period. The agreement, reached after discussions between the parties and the Trustees of the Scheme will enable the airline to restructure its business and accept £125m in new capital and liquidity facilities from Greybull Capital LLP in return for a 90 per cent shareholding.

Frost & Sullivan has recently predicted that 4% of all sales (the equivalent of 4.5million units) of new cars will be online purchases by 2020. This compares to 5,000 new cars sold solely online in 2011. An implication of this, should they wish to avoid a similar fate to the likes of HMV, Jessops and Blockbuster, is that car retailers are going to have to make adjustments to their selling processes in order to avoid showrooms becoming mere browsing opportunities for customers to pick and chose but purchase online.