The owner of Birmingham's Bullring shopping centre has sold the last of its retail parks for £455 million, its largest disposal in the last decade.

Hammerson said it had exited sites including in Falkirk.

The nine sites span a total of 205,000 square metres of space, the business said. They generate a total of £36 million in rental income every year.

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"Against a challenged retail and investment backdrop we have exited the retail parks sector," said chief executive David Atkins.

Seven of the sites were sold to Orion European Real Estate, for £400 million. The remaining two, in Swansea and Belfast, generated proceeds of £55 million.

The business announced in July 2018 that it was planning to leave the sector over the medium term to focus on its flagship assets in major cities across Europe.

Since then it has sold 14 retail parks for a total of £764 million.

"Having achieved disposals of close to £1 billion since the beginning of 2019, our focus remains on strengthening our balance sheet to create further resilience," Mr Atkins said.

"The completion of this strategic disposal enables us to create a more concentrated portfolio of flagship venues, premium outlets and city quarters which we expect will deliver greater levels of both income stability and growth over the medium term."

It comes amid a challenge in the retail sector, as customers increasingly move online to do their shopping.

Printed university course books continue to weigh on publisher Pearson as students are turning ever more to digital alternatives.

The company's US higher education courseware business lost 12% of its sales in 2019, it said, meaning overall sales fell to under £3.9 billion, from £4.1 billion a year earlier. On an underlying basis, sales remained flat.

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Pearson has long toiled with its suffering university books unit as students turn away from printed books.

Sales of physical books declined 30%, with the growth of digital products only making up for it slightly with "modest" growth. Half of all learners now prefer eBooks, the company said.

However, chief executive John Fallon was positive about what the future might bring, promising a "exciting pipeline" of new products and services.

"We are approaching the bottom of the valley on US educational courseware," he said on a call with reporters.

"The future of learning will be increasingly digital and we have built, by revenue, by far the world's leading digital learning company," Mr Fallon said.

However, investors were less happy about the results, sending the firm's shares down by as much as 8.4p, or 1.4%, to 575.6p.

The business is still heavily reliant on North America, which accounted for 65% of its sales and 62% of adjusted operating profit in 2019.

Pearson's operating profit was £275 million, a halving from the year before when it felt the benefit of selling parts of its business. On an adjusted basis operating profit rose 6%.

Pearson said 36% of revenue now comes from digital, an increase of 2% points since last year.

A further 30%, which is another 2% point increase, is from digitally enabled products, while non-digital fell by 4% points to 34%.

The business, which sold its 25% stake in Penguin Random House for $675 million (£523 million), said it has completed £79 million of a £350 million share buyback announced at the time.

It also promised that full-year dividend will be raised by 1p to 19.5p.

Public sector borrowing, excluding banks owned by the state, was in a surplus of £9.8 billion in January, £2.1 billion less than in the same month last year, the Office for National Statistics has said.

It came as the public sector spent less money than it got in taxes and other income.

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The public coffers are often in surplus in January due to self-assessed income tax being paid then.

In the financial year-to-date, borrowing has reached £44.8 billion, £5.8 billion more than in the same period last year.

National debt now stands at 29.6% of gross domestic product (GDP), a decrease of 0.7% points from the same period last year, showing that GDP is growing faster than debt.

"The difference between central government's income and spending makes the largest contribution to the amount borrowed by the public sector," the ONS said.

In January 2020, the central government had a surplus of £11.9 billion. But in the same period local government borrowed £2.4 billion and and public corporations borrowed £200 million.