Friday newspaper round-up: Low paid workers, gender inequality, PayPal, Liberty Global

A smaller proportion of UK workers are low paid than at any time since the early 1980s, due to above-inflation increases in the government’s national living wage. A report by the Resolution Foundation thinktank said the share of employees who were officially classified as low paid – earning less than around £8.50 an hour – had fallen to 18%, the lowest since 1982. – Guardian

One of Britain’s biggest investment firms is taking on gender inequality by launching the first UK fund to prioritise investing in companies where women are well represented at all levels. Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), which manages £983bn of assets, said the new fund – into which the firm has ploughed £50m of its own money – “aims to empower investors to make a difference to the companies in which they invest and wider society”. – Guardian

PayPal is swooping for Swedish payments start-up iZettle in a $2.2bn (£1.6bn) all-cash deal, as it seeks to create a "one-stop shop" for transactions. The deal will be PayPal's biggest purchase to date, gatecrashing plans by iZettle to float on the Nasdaq Stockholm in what would have been Europe's largest fintech IPO. - Telegraph

The international cable giant Liberty Global has launched a hunt for a new leader for its British operation Virgin Media, to work alongside chief executive Tom Mockridge as he prepares to step down. Mr Mockridge, who has run Virgin Media since Liberty Global took control in a £15bn takeover five years ago, is expected to vacate his £3m-a-year chief executive role in 2019. - Telegraph

Business is demanding reforms of the government’s apprenticeship levy after official figures showed that the number of new apprentices has collapsed by a quarter this year. Employer groups said that the decline was due to mismanagement rather than opposition to the scheme. Difficulties in accessing funding and the higher costs involved have become deterrents to recruiting apprentices, which is undermining the government’s ambition to add three million starts by 2020. – The Times

Ministers have called on the competition watchdog to investigate whether the £12 billion merger between Sainsbury’s and Asda is likely to harm supermarket suppliers and the food industry. Greg Clark, the business secretary, has written to Andrea Coscelli, the chief executive of the Competition and Markets Authority, to highlight the “potential concern” about the move among supermarket suppliers. – The Times