U.K. Retail Sales Stall as Consumer Weakness Persists: Economy

U.K. retail sales unexpectedly stagnated in November as spending at department stores slumped the most in almost two years.

Sales including fuel were unchanged from October, when they fell 0.7 percent, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. The median forecast of 22 economists in a Bloomberg News survey was for a 0.4 percent increase. Sales at non-specialized stores, mainly department stores, fell 1.5 percent, the most since February 2011. The strongest growth was in electrical goods, boosted by tablet computers such as Apple Inc.’s iPad.