Business live: 31 July 2015

Summary

Tom Espiner

Athens stock market to reopenpublished at 19:26 BST 31 July 2015
Our business correspondent tweets:
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Anglo-Irish execs sentenced to jailpublished at 16:40 BST 31 July 2015
BBC business correspondent tweets...

NatWest banking problemspublished at 12:13 BST 31 July 2015
'Hot money' heads for Asian tech firmspublished at 12:08 BST 31 July 2015
BBC Asia business correspondent Karishma Vaswani is at the RISE conference for technology entrepreneurs and investors in Hong Kong.
Quote Message
For the 525 startups that are exhibiting at this conference, piquing an investor’s interest is key to raising funds. There are companies here from Mongolia all the way to Indonesia. The 300 investors here are hoping to cash in on that next big Asian startup. Analysts say there’s a lot of hot money floating around the Asian technology sector right now. In the last 12 months alone more than $30bn was invested in Asian tech companies – a jump of 45% from last year. Many investors at this conference have warned of a bubble and say that valuations are too high especially in China.

Rents rising at fastest clip in two yearspublished at 11:27 BST 31 July 2015
BBC personal finance reporter Brian Milligan tweets:
Scotch loses its flavourpublished at 10:28
Image source, Getty Images
The scorching growth of Scotch whisky has cooled and BBC Scotland business and economy editor Douglas Fraser thinks the reasons why can be seen in the accounts of spirits giant Diageo.
Quote Message
Scotch whisky has lost its leading role in driving Diageo's sales. As Diageo has two-fifths of the industry in Scotland, that matters a lot. Perhaps it's because it was growing in the wrong places. Venezuela's economy has tanked. There was a slowdown in Brazil. Turkey turned from Scotch to locally-distilled drinks when the price of imports made them less attractive. The official disapproval of extravagant hospitality in China has also slowed things up.
You can read more from Douglas here.

Amazon signs deal for Clarkson motoring showpublished at 09:58 BST 31 July 2015
There is a lot of chat on Twitter about Amazon's deal with Jeremy Clarkson to create a new motoring show. It's being widely reported that Amazon will spend a whopping $6.9m (£4.4m) per episode.
The show will be available to those who pay £79 for an Amazon Prime annual subscription.
Mr Clarkson was suspended in March, following what was called a "fracas" with a Top Gear producer.
The row, which took place in a Yorkshire hotel, was said to have occurred because Mr Clarkson could not get steak for dinner after a day's filming.
The FT cartoonist has a clever take on that today:
Image source, BANXCARTOONS
Lloyds braces for packaged account payoutspublished at 09:18 BST 31 July 2015
Money Box presenter, Paul Lewis spots that Lloyds has set aside a large sum to cover any potential payouts related to the mis-selling of packaged bank accounts. He tweets:

UK firms to work on Hinckley Pointpublished at 08:27
Douglas Fraser is Scotland business and economy editor. He tweets:
UK interest rate increase this year?published at 07:34
Andrew Sentance is a former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, which sets interest rates. He tweets: