The 10 biggest business stories on Wednesday April 13

Tesco returns to profit as UK sales growth, Panama prosecutors raid Mossack Fonseca, China exports surge

Panama, despite being home to Mossack Fonseca law firm, will not attend (AP)

1. Tesco has returned to profit after reporting its first quarterly sales growth for three years. Like-for-like sales up 1.6 per cent in the fourth quarter. The supermarket has also shaken off its £6.4 billion annual loss with a pre-tax profit of £162 million for the year to February.

2. Organized crime prosecutors raided the offices of the Mossack Fonseca law firm Tuesday looking for evidence of money laundering and financing terrorism following a leak of documents about tax havens it set up for wealthy international clients.

3. China's exports surged by 11.5 per cent in US dollar denominated terms from March 2015, authorities announced on Wednesday, in a positive sign for the world's second-largest economy.

4. The Eurozone jobs crisis is encouraging more southern European migrants to head to the UK to join those from the east, according to a report by the Migration Observatory. Over the past five years the number of EU nationals living in the UK has gone up by almost 700,000 to 3.3 million.

5. Peabody Energy, the world's largest privately owned coal producer, filed for U. bankruptcy protection on Wednesday in the wake of a sharp fall in coal prices that left it unable to service a recent debt-fueled expansion into Australia.

6. Andrew Law, chairman and chief executive of the $8 billion Caxton Associates, said a vote to leave the EU presented an unnecessary risk to the economy for no clear gain.

7. EasyHotel, the budget hotel company, announced that trading for the six months ended March 31 was slightly above the board's expectations.

8. WH Smith has delivered strong first half results, with profit and earnings up double-digits and an improvement in high street sales. The company reported group pre-tax profit of £80 million for the six months to 29 February, up 11 per cent from the same period in 2015.

9. American Apparel, the teen apparel retailer, is laying off hundreds of workers as it overhauls its production process, which could include outsourcing part of its production to another US manufacturer, the Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday.

10 Shares in the Mr Kipling to Oxo maker Premier Foods have crashed almost 30 per cent after McCormick said it was walking away from a bid that would have been worth almost £500 million.The stock is trading at about 40.6p, valuing the company at about £322 million.