Monday business round-up: Four key stories of the day

Shopper footfall fell for the sixth month running in October. Picture: Ian Georgeson

Scotland’s retailers are becoming “increasingly adept at harnessing the internet”, said the Scottish Retail Consortium, which revealed that shopper numbers continue to falter on the high street and in shopping centres. Footfall north of the Border was down 0.6 per cent in October compared with a year ago, but that represented a slight improvement on September’s 0.8 per cent decline.

Mentoring organisation Informatics Ventures, which runs the annual Engage, Invest, Exploit (EIE) conference in Edinburgh, revealed the line-up of Scottish start-ups it will be taking to London this week for an investor showcase. Each of the 12 companies attending will be seeking funding of more than £1.5 million to scale and grow their businesses, and the Scottish firms making the trip will be Appointedd, Swipii, Shot Scope, Mallzee and My1Login.

ZoneFox, the Edinburgh-based security software specialist, said it was eyeing further growth at home and abroad after securing a £650,000 funding boost. The start-up, based at the CodeBase technology incubator, also won a deal with Seric Systems, the Paisley technology infrastructure specialist.

North Sea producer Premier Oil struck a deal to sell its Norwegian business for $120m (£79m) in cash. The FTSE 250 firm, which has been operating in Norway since 2005, said the proceeds from the sale to Det Norske would be used to pay down its debt.