(Reuters) – U.S. companies borrowed 8.7% more to finance equipment investments in November compared with the same period a year earlier, the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association said on Friday.

New loans, leases and lines of credit signed up by companies in November rose to $10.36 billion, from $9.53 billion in the year-ago period.

The Washington-based trade association, which reports economic activity for the more than $1 trillion equipment finance sector, also said that credit approvals for U.S. companies were at 74% in November this year.

The Equipment Leasing & Finance Foundation, ELFA’s non-profit affiliate, said its confidence index for December reached a fresh three-year high, indicating that executives expect continued strength in lending volumes and further improvements in financial conditions.

The ELFA CapEx Finance Index of leasing and finance activity is based on a 25-member survey which includes Bank of America as well as the financing units of Caterpillar, Dell Technologies, Siemens AG, Canon and Volvo AB.

(Reporting by Abhinav Parmar in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)

Corporate America is gearing up for Trump 2.0, having already gotten a flavor of what Trump has in mind. Potentially crushing fresh tariffs on China, even if it means higher levels of US inflation. Mass deportations come with their own set of economic risks. And soon, potentially, a new leader atop the Federal Reserve. Is there any way a top executive could prepare for uncertain outcomes tied to these initiatives from the Trump administration? How does one lead their teams when uncertainty begins to reign supreme again? Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi sat down with former TD Ameritrade CEO and former head football coach at Coastal Carolina University Joe Moglia. Moglia is not only considered a market master for his work from 2001 to 2008 building TD Ameritrade into a trading powerhouse but also a leadership expert. Moglia shares his perspective on the record-setting year for markets, what’s next for investors, and how to lead with a clear focus in 2025.

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By Joe Cash

BEIJING (Reuters) – Britain’s finance minister Rachel Reeves will visit China on a two-day trip in January to revive high-level economic and financial talks that have been frozen since 2019, three people with knowledge of the plan said.

Reeves is scheduled to meet China’s vice premier He Lifeng, the country’s economy tsar, on Jan. 11 in Beijing to restart what had been annual talks known as the Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD), they said.

If those discussions show progress, the two sides could look to re-launch what had been a regular and wider meeting known as the Joint Economic and Trade Commission (JETCO) later next year, the sources said.

British businesses have also pressed to restart meetings of the UK-China CEO Council, a group established by then-Prime Minister Theresa May and then-Premier Li Keqiang in 2018, one of the sources added.

Reuters reported on Thursday that HSBC Chairman Mark Tucker will lead a business delegation that will visit China next month in a bid to boost trade and investment with a particular focus on financial services.

Reeves will also go to Shanghai, where she will meet with British companies operating in China on Jan. 12, according to the sources, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the plans.

Britain decided to suspend most economic dialogues with China in 2020 after Beijing imposed a national security law in Hong Kong, the former British colony. Since then, spying allegations, the war in Ukraine, and the sanctioning of lawmakers have increased tensions between the two countries.

The Labour government, in power in Britain since July, has made improving ties with China one of its main foreign policy goals after a period under successive Conservative governments when relations plunged to their lowest in decades.

In 2022, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a Conservative, declared the end of a “golden era” of relations with China that one of his predecessors, David Cameron, had championed.

Over the preceding decade, British and Chinese officials had met annually for high-level trade and investment talks, holding an EFD almost every year and a JETCO every two years.

Those talks resulted in the London-Shanghai stock connect scheme, Britain joining the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and joint investment into green technologies, including the UK’s Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant.

(Reporting by Joe Cash)