The 10 biggest business stories on Thursday November 19

Regulators to report on HBOS failings; Royal Mail profits are down; Pfizer in near agreement to buy allergan in biggest deal

The cost of Viagra reduced after Pfizer’s patent expired (Getty Images)

1. The Office for National Statistics publishes month-on-month retail sales data on Thursday at 9.30am - a good indicator of the health of the economy. Sales rose 1.9 per cent the month before, but analysts predict a 0.5 per cent fall.

2. UK financial regulators are set to rule on whether former HBOS bosses will be banned from working in the City.

3. Minutes of the Federal Open Markets Committee's meeting in October indicated that the Fed is ready to raise interest rates next month for the first time in nine years.

4. Young people are on track to be poorer than their parents at every stage of their lives, according to a new report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

5. Yahoo shareholder Starboard Value has urged the online media company to halt the plan to sell its stake in Alibaba Group Holdings due to the risk of incurring taxes on the sale, the Wall Street journal reported.

6. China is to buy a batch of 24 Sukhoi-35 fighter jets from Russia in a deal worth more than $2 billion (£1.3 billion), an industry source told Reuters on Thursday, in a move that may help the Kremlin's strained finances.

7. Royal Mail's first-half profits have fallen 30 per cent to £116 million - hit by redundancy costs and falling revenues.

8. London councils are raking in over £119million a year from traffic violations caught on CCTV, with motorists in the capital contrib­uting 65 per cent of money made from traffic violations across the UK.

9. Poundland has reported six-month results. Pre-tax profits fell to £5.3 million compared with £9.3 million for the same period last year. The company blamed the costs of its trial in Spain and fees associated with the acquisition of 99p Stores.

10. Pfizer is in advanced talks to buy Allergan for as much as $380 per share, according to people familiar with the matter, valuing the Botox maker at as high as $150 billion in what would be the drug industry’s largest-ever deal, Bloomberg reports.