Friday newspaper round-up: cryptocurrencies, fracking, Brexit, GKN

The Nobel prize-winning economist Robert Shiller has said bitcoin will not be a “permanent feature” of the financial world, as politicians indicated that a clampdown on cryptocurrencies was coming. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, Shiller hailed bitcoin as a “really clever idea”. But although he was impressed with the technology behind it, he was concerned that it had “gone viral as a currency”. – Guardian

Fracking companies must undergo financial health checks if they want to win a green light for their operations, the business secretary has said, as the industry faces another barrier to exploration in the UK. The decision comes after a Barclays-backed company hoping to be the first to frack in the UK for seven years suffered a blow when the business secretary, Greg Clark, said he was withholding consent because of the state of its accounts. – Guardian

City veteran Dame Helena Morrissey is organising a rival event to raise funds for the charities that were forced to turn down donations from this year’s scandal-hit Presidents Club dinner. Dame Helena, the head of personal investing at Legal & General Investment Management, said she was working with colleagues across the City to stage a dinner with a 50-50 gender split in attendance, as opposed to the all-male guest list at the Presidents Club. – Telegraph

Theresa May has rebuked Philip Hammond after he triggered a furious Cabinet row after making a dramatic public call for a soft Brexit. The Chancellor used a speech in Davos, Switzerland, to say that there would only be "very modest" changes to relations between the EU and the UK after Brexit. – Telegraph

Doubts are being raised about the scale of the shortfall in GKN’s pension funds amid questions over whether it could become a “poison pill” in the £7.4 billion hostile takeover of the FTSE 100 engineering giant. Questions have been asked in the City about the relationship between GKN and trustees of its £4 billion retirement schemes, and it has now emerged that GKN directors believe that the schemes’ deficits could be less than half the £1.1 billion that has been claimed. – The Times

They’re calling it the casual dining crunch. As soaring labour costs, business rates, rent and food inflation take an ever bigger bite out of restaurant takings, so more and more operators are resorting to painful restructurings to ensure they live to serve another meal. In the past two weeks alone, Byron, the posh burger chain beloved of George Osborne, and Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Italian brand have both resorted to company voluntary arrangements — an insolvency process — to keep themselves afloat, and all eyes are now on whether Prezzo, widely tipped as the next restructuring candidate, can make it through the crunch. – The Times