Britain's economic growth is set to lag behind an accelerating Eurozone in 2018

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• Growth in the UK will lag behind the rest of the Eurozone in 2018 as uncertainty around Brexit begins to bite, PwC forecasts.
• High inflation and dampened business investment have slowed Britain's economic growth since the EU referendum.

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LONDON — Growth in the UK will lag behind the rest of the Eurozone in 2018, according to new forecasts that show output weighed down by Brexit uncertainty.

A report from auditors PwC predicted Eurozone growth will be above 2% in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) next year, with the Netherlands leading the way with economic growth at 2.5%. PwC predicted UK growth will reach just 1.4%.

Barret Kupelian, a senior economist at PwC, said: "While the [global] growth outlook for 2018 is positive, there are some downside risks for business to bear in mind, including the progress of the Brexit negotiations and wider discussions about the future of the EU."

High inflation and dampened business investment have slowed Britain's economic growth since the EU referendum in June 2016. The Financial Times published a study on Mondayestimating that Britain's output is now 0.9% than was possible if the country had voted Remain, equating to a loss of around £350 million a week.

Chuka Umunna

✔@ChukaUmunna

#NewBrexitFacts: @FT research shows that the cost of Brexit could be the same £350m per week that Leave campaigners promised for the NHS. Extraordinary https://www.ft.com/content/e3b29230-db5f-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b482 …

12:30 AM - Dec 18, 2017

The real price of Brexit begins to emerge

FT research shows that the weekly hit to the British economy could be the same £350m that Leave campaigners promised to claw back

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PwC also predicted the global economy will grow almost 4%, adding an extra $5 trillion (£3.75 trillion) to global output at current values.

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Falling instant-noodle sales points to the economic rise of rural China

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• China last year sold 8 billion fewer packets of instant noodles than it did in 2013.
• Fewer migrants from rural China are moving to cities, which is affecting sales.
• Instead, workers are staying in rural areas of China where annual incomes are rising at a faster rate than in cities.

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People in China are eating billions fewer packets of instant noodles every year, the state-run Global Times reported Monday.

Citing the World Instant Noodles Association, Global Times said China and Hong Kong ate 46.2 billion packets in 2013. By 2016 that had dropped by about 8 billion packets to 38.5 billion. And more than one major manufacturer has experienced a drop in profit over 25%.

While the popularity of on-demand food services that provide cheap, quick food to China's growing middle class are affecting instant-noodle sales, another key contributor is the rise of rural China.

An economics professor at Tongji University, Zhang Xin, told Global Times that sales had plunged because far fewer low-paid migrants from rural China were moving to or living in cities, where they are one of the biggest consumers of instant noodles.

From 2010 to 2016, the growth in migrant workers dropped off significantly to 0.5% from 5.2%. And in 2015, the migrant population decreased for the first time in 30 years.

Instead, more workers are returning to their hometowns after acquiring skills or money in the cities or choosing not to leave in the first place because of increased opportunities.

Over the past seven years, the annual net income in rural China has outpaced the growth of that in urban centers. And, by 2020, China is hoping to double its people's per capita salaries from their 2010 levels.

Big tech in China is also playing a part. Both Alibaba and JD.com have begun implementing projects to connect rural sellers with buyers across the country, with the hope of raising local incomes.

High-speed trains are also killing the instant noodle

A railway employee next to a high-speed train at a Beijing railway station in 2011. PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images

Better infrastructure is also hurting the instant-noodle market in China.

Long train journeys back to rural hometowns used to be standard in China, where there were no high-speed trains as recently as a decade ago. Now the country has the world's largest high-speed train network, running over 12,400 miles, or 20,000 kilometers.

While this has drastically cut journey times, it has also cut the number of meals that workers would consume aboard the trains.

One traveler told Global Times his 20-hour trip, during which he used to eat three meals, had begun to take only six hours, so he no longer needed to eat instant noodles. Other travelers are using a pilot program at 27 stations to order food on-demand.

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BMW electric cars hit 100,000 sales target

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The new BMW i3 electric car is seen after it was unveiled at a ceremony in London Thomson Reuters

BERLIN (Reuters) - BMW said on Monday it had hit its target of selling 100,000 electric cars this year around the world, benefiting from strong demand in western Europe and the United States for models such as the i3 and the 2-series plug-in hybrid Active Tourer.

This is more than 60 percent up from the 62,255 electric cars BMW sold last year. The German luxury carmaker has said it expects 2018 electric-vehicle (EV) sales to grow by a medium two-digit percentages.

A pioneer in electric cars, BMW launched the i3 hatchback in 2013 but sales have been relatively low and management has wrestled with whether to go all-out for electrification.

But that changed in September when the Munich-based group said it would gear up for mass production of electric cars and aimed to have 12 fully electric models by 2025 with a range of up to 700 kilometers.

"Electric mobility is the indicator where I measure our success," Chief Executive Harald Krueger said.

Earlier on Monday, U.S. EV battery company Solid Power said it had partnered with BMW to develop the next-generation solid-state battery technology for use in electric cars.

(Reporting by Andreas Cremer. Editing by Jane Merriman)

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Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway tops $300,000 a share for the first time

• Jonathan Stempel, Reuters

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• Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway crossed the $300,000 a share mark for the first time on Monday.
• This comes despite four straight quarters of lower operating profit. 
• Buffett has run Berkshire since 1965.

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(Reuters) - Berkshire Hathaway Inc's stock price touched $300,000 for the first time on Monday, reflecting investors' confidence in Warren Buffett's conglomerate despite four straight quarters of lower operating profit.

Crossing the $300,000 threshold put Berkshire's Class A shares up 22.9 percent for the year, compared with a 20 percent gain in the Standard & Poor's 500.

Berkshire's Class B shares, worth about 1/1500th of Class A shares, traded at around $199.75. Neither class pays dividends.

The gain occurred even though 2017 has been Berkshire's second straight year of mediocre operating performance relative to prior periods.

Operating profit, which rose 1 percent in 2016, was down 16 percent from January to September, reflecting losses from storms such as Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, and the accounting for a transaction with American International Group Inc.

But book value, or assets minus liabilities, was up 8.9 percent. Buffett considers this a good measure of Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire's growth.

Berkshire has more than 90 operating units, including large businesses such as the BNSF railroad, Geico auto insurance and Berkshire Hathaway Energy utilities, and smaller businesses making Dairy Queen ice cream, Duracell batteries, Fruit of the Loom underwear, Ginsu knives and the World Book encyclopedia.

Buffett, 87, has run Berkshire since 1965, when it was a struggling textile company whose shares were worth barely $11 each. Shareholders who hung on for the ride have had gains topping 2,400,000 percent.

Only a handful of U.S. companies have stock prices that have reached even four figures.

Other members of the exclusive club include Amazon.com Inc , Google parent Alphabet Inc and Priceline Group Inc, and lesser-known companies such as Seaboard Corp, a pork producer that also ships cargo by sea.

A high share price can reduce trading and encourage long-term ownership.

But companies can encourage retail ownership by splitting their stock or, as Berkshire did, creating lower-priced shares.

In 1996, Buffett created Class B shares worth 1/30th of Class A shares, but with lesser voting rights, to stop fee-hungry managers from creating "unit trusts" that sliced up Class A shares for smaller investors seeking "Berkshire look-alikes."

Then in 2010, when it bought BNSF, Berkshire split the B shares 50-for-1, letting more of the railroad's shareholders swap their stock for Berkshire stock if they wished. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Jennifer Ablan and Steve Orlofsky)

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