Monday newspaper round-up: Business confidence, Holland & Barrett, Microsoft, BT

Business confidence has crashed to the lowest point since 2012, and the economy is only growing because firms are stockpiling ahead of Brexit, according to a key sentiment indicator. The BDO optimism index, which charts how businesses expect output to develop in the next three to six months, fell faster in March that at any time since the bleakest days in the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008. – Guardian

The small business commissioner and senior MPs have taken the highly unusual step of publicly criticising the health food chain Holland & Barrett for treating its suppliers “shabbily”, as part of a crackdown on companies that take months to pay suppliers. Holland & Barrett was accused of having “a purposeful culture of poor payment practices”, in a damning assessment by the small business commissioner, Paul Uppal. He also condemned the company for failing to cooperate with his investigation. – Guardian

Microsoft has dismissed Google’s push into video games, saying the company’s upcoming “cloud gaming” service will be unable to match the Xbox console and will lack the catalogue of high profile titles needed to attract gamers. “Emerging competitors like Google have a cloud infrastructure, a community with YouTube, but they don’t have the content,” said Mike Nichols, the chief marketing officer of Microsoft’s Xbox division. – Telegraph

BT Faces a new threat to its dominance of the broadband market as ­Virgin Media considers allowing rivals access to Britain’s cable network for the first time. Liberty Global, Virgin Media’s New York-listed parent company, is conducting a review of whether to rent ­cable broadband to providers such as Sky, which currently rely entirely on Openreach, BT’s regulated infrastructure arm. – Telegraph

The Prudential Regulation Authority has been asked by MPs to investigate whether Lloyds Banking Group bosses, including António Horta-Osório, its chief executive, breached corporate governance rules by allegedly “covering up” the HBOS Reading fraud. The all-party parliamentary group on fair business banking said that Lloyds executives had “withheld” a critical whistleblower’s report from the bank’s board for more than four years, which it claimed was in breach of a Bank of England stipulation that management must be “open and transparent” with non-executives. – The Times

KPMG is plotting an overhaul of its British business to create an independent audit firm, regardless of any decision by the competition regulator to force a break-up of the Big Four accountants. The plans would mean the business pulling away from Deloitte, EY and PWC, its rivals that have lobbied against enforced structural changes being made to their operations. – The Times