Friday newspaper round-up: Boeing, business confidence, Carillion

Boeing on Thursday released hundreds of internal messages that raise serious questions about its development of simulators and the 737 Max that was grounded in March after two fatal crashes, prompting outrage from US lawmakers. In an April 2017 exchange of instant messages, two employees expressed complaints about the Max following references to issues with the plane’s flight management computer. “This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys,” one unnamed employee wrote. – Guardian

BlackRock, the world’s largest investor, has joined an influential pressure group calling for the biggest polluters to reduce their emissions, after criticisms that it was undermining action addressing the climate crisis. The US investment firm has signed up to Climate Action 100+, a group of investors managing assets worth more than $35tn (£27tn), that pressures fossil fuel producers and other companies responsible for two-thirds of annual global industrial emissions to show how they will reduce carbon dioxide pollution. – Guardian

Boris Johnson’s election triumph has sent business confidence rocketing to a record high and breathed new life into Britain’s jobs market. Top finance directors reported the biggest jump in confidence on record during the fourth quarter after the election broke the Brexit deadlock and ended the threat of a far-left government, a Deloitte survey revealed. – Telegraph

Four thousand former railway maintenance workers with the collapsed Carillion construction group will have their pension promises largely met after their scheme was officially admitted into the Pension Protection Fund, the industry lifeboat. The transfer of Carillion Rail Pension Scheme, part of the gigantic Railways Pension Scheme (RPS), into the protection fund comes amid growing concern about shortfalls in the RPS — which one expert said now amounted to £11 billion, far in excess of the official actuarial deficit. – The Times

Industry in the north of England is reeling after the steel group Liberty and the train manufacturer Hitachi Rail announced the loss of 600 jobs. Liberty Steel, part of the UK business built up by the entrepreneur Sanjeev Gupta buying distressed assets in the struggling sector, said that it was seeking 355 redundancies across four plants, mainly in Yorkshire but also in south Wales. Hitachi Rail, which assembles trains at its factory in Co Durham, including the new rolling stock for the Great Western and London North Eastern inter-city railways, said it was cutting 250 staff, or 30 per cent of its 850 workers. – The Times