RAIL DEAL: Insurer MetLife will take a minority stake in a consortium building new high-speed trains in the North-East.

The insurance provider has announced it will acquire an interest in Agility Trains Ltd, a consortium which includes Hitachi Rail Europe, who are building trains at Newton Aycliffe, County Durham.

MetLife said Agility Trains West was involved with the first phase of the £4.5bn Department for Transport’s Intercity Express Programme, with a contract worth about £2.4bn.

Japanese manufacturer Hitachi will open its Newton Aycliffe plant in 2015, employing more than 700 workers.

RACING DEAL: A North-racecourse has signed a four-year deal with a beer maker.

Newcastle Racecourse, which will host the Northumberland Plate in June, is now a partner with Heineken, the brand behind John Smiths, Fosters and Strongbow.

Newcastle Racecourse is owned by Arena Racing Company, which also look after Sedgefield, Doncaster and Southwell racecourses.

PUNCH RESULTS: Pub chain Punch Taverns has made losses of more than 16m after counting the cost of the recent bad weather.

The firm, which has about 4,400 leasehold pubs, said it lost £16.7m for the 28 weeks to the start of March, but revealed the performance was in line with expectations. It made profits of £30.2m a year earlier.

It sold more than 160 pubs during the half year to raise £55m and aims to dispose of nearly 1,500 non-core pubs.

FLYING HIGH: Budget airline Easyjet experienced strong Easter sales as passengers rushed to escape the freezing UK.

The carrier said it expects to cut losses by almost half for the six months to March 31, despite more cancellations and rising fuel costs.

It said revenues per seat had grown by 8.5 per cent, which had been helped by higher than expected Easter bookings, with losses expected to be about £60m, compared with £112m a year ago.

SALES DRIVE: Registrations of new cars in the UK rose by almost six per cent during March.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said there were 394,800 registrations on the new 13-plate, supported by a strong demand for private registrations.

The SMMT said the increase was higher than the two per cent rise at the same time last year, and show the UK defied the trend across the EU, where new car registrations were down.

It said volumes of new cars were now at their highest since the Government introduced its Scrappage Incentive Scheme in 2009.

PRICES RISE: House prices across the UK have risen steadily, according to a new survey by Halifax.

The bank says prices in the first three months of 2013 were 1.1 per cent higher than during the same period in 2012, though it warned the rate of increase has slowed since February.

The results come after Chancellor George Osborne introduced the Help to Buy scheme, which allows homebuyers to put down a deposit of only five per cent, and aims to get 500,000 people on the property ladder.