Friday newspaper round-up: Ikea, durum wheat, RICS, Goldman

Ikea is poised to buy Topshop’s former flagship store on London’s Oxford Street, once the jewel in Sir Philip Green’s retail empire, for an estimated £385m, creating a new London home for the Swedish furniture brand. The deal to buy the long leasehold on the building, which includes the now-vacant 100,000 sq ft Topshop outlet as well as a Nike Town store and a shop for footwear brand Vans, is expected to complete the sell off of the assets of Green’s Arcadia Group empire which collapsed into administration in November last year. - Guardian

Shoppers can expect to pay more for their pasta in coming months amid shortages of its key ingredient following a disastrous growing season. A scramble for durum wheat has pushed the price up nearly 90% this summer after drought and soaring temperatures hit farms in Canada, one of the biggest producers. - Guardian

Ireland has been forced to freeze power exports to the UK to prevent a shortage which could have sparked blackouts as surging energy prices continue to cause chaos across Europe. A toxic combination of low wind speeds and a severe squeeze on the supply of natural gas sent power costs jumping tenfold on the British mainland on Thursday to as much as £2,300 per megawatt-hour, a new record high. - Telegraph

Goldman Sachs will scrap social distancing in its London office from Monday as part of its drive to get more staff to return. The bank also will stop the free canteen food that it has been offering staff throughout the pandemic in an effort to boost the recovery of local cafés and restaurants, Richard Gnodde, its international chief executive, said. - The Times

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has confirmed the departures of four senior board members, including its chief executive, after the release of a critical independent report, which suggested that the crisis-hit body should apologise to the non-executive directors it sacked two years ago. The institution said that Sean Tompkins, 55, the chief executive who received £1.1 million in pay, including bonuses, from 2017 to 2019, would not receive a pay-off after his exit.- The Times