Friday newspaper round-up: RBS, Carillion, house prices, Allianz

The Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive has been accused of withholding information from MPs investigating the bank’s mistreatment of small businesses. In a frosty exchange with Nicky Morgan, the Treasury committee chair, Ross McEwan rejected the suggestion that he had misled MPs at an evidence session into heavily criticised practices at the lender’s Global Restructuring Group. – Guardian

Travellers who renew their passports face losing up to nine months’ validity due to a little-publicised change to rules brought in by the Home Office. Up until last week, when British citizens renewed their passports, time remaining on the existing document was added to the new one – up to a maximum of nine months. But passport applicants have been told this no longer applies and any remaining months will be lost if an attempt is made to renew the document early. – Guardian

MPs have launched a fresh attack on the Government's system for monitoring risky public sector contracts in the wake of Carillion's collapse. Rachel Reeves and Frank Field, the respective heads of the business and work & pensions select committees, hit out at the Government's apparent refusal to review the use of so-called Crown Representatives, which they said had had the "wool pulled over their eyes" by the doomed outsourcer's bosses. – Telegraph

German insurer Allianz has bought a 3.5pc stake, worth an estimated £18.7m, in the electric-powered racing series Formula E according to documents recently filed by its Hong Kong-based parent company. Allianz raced into Formula E in February last year after putting the brakes on its partnership with Formula One. It started off as a Formula E sponsor which gave it branding at races in cities such as Berlin, Paris and New York. – Telegraph

House prices would fall by 35 per cent over three years after a chaotic no-deal Brexit, according to a stark briefing given to the cabinet by the Bank of England governor yesterday. Mark Carney told senior ministers that spiralling mortgage rates would cause a crash in the housing market. – The Times

Hundreds of staff at the Financial Conduct Authority spent an afternoon learning African drumming earlier this week, just hours after the City Regulator’s chairman warned about the pressure on its budget. About 400 FCA staff spent several hours on Tuesday afternoon at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre in London learning the use of drums as part of a corporate away day. – The Times