Sunday newspaper round-up: Industrial strategy, May to meet Trump, Barclays, courgettes

Theresa May will on Monday reveal her '10 pillars' industrial strategy that will aim to boost sector productivity. The Sunday Times said the Prime Minister's long-awaited green paper includes measures to improve skills, boost scientific research, and increasing spending on broadband, transport and energy networks, as well as £170m for the building of 'new polytechnics' in every region.

Donald Trump will welcome Theresa May in Washington on Friday and has even taken to calling the Prime Minister “my Maggie” in reference to the close Thatcher-Reagan relationship he wants to recreate, according to sources cited by the Sunday Telegraph. May, who will be the first foreign leader to visit the White House since the 45th US president was sworn in, and Trump are expected to talk about a post-Brexit trade deal, a new 'passporting' system between banks, and draw up a joint statement on European defence spending.

British bank bosses have begun franticly lobbying their foreign counterparts to hold off plans to shift operations to other major European cities, the Sunday Telegraph said, citing a senior City figures in Davos. International banks are being asked to resist moving jobs, “for the good of London”, until it becomes clearer that the UK can hammer out a transitional deal with Brussels.

Barclays has stepped up its legal fight against the US Department of Justice over its role in the selling of toxic mortgage securities in the run-up to the financial crisis. A lawsuit filed last month accuses the British bank of misrepresenting the quality of $31bn (£25bn) of home loans between 2005 and 2007, with Deutsche Bank having just been stung for a $7.2bn fine.

British businesses and consumers need to avoid being lulled into a false sense of security as the economy heads for a slump this year, the Mail on Sunday reported. The influential EY Item Club has predicted UK growth will slow to just 1.3% this year and will remain below 2% until 2020.

The UK government is looking at a £3.8bn flotation for the Green Investment Bank (GIB) after a planned sale to Australian bank Macquarie was scrapped. The Sunday Times said business secretary Greg Clark would have to endure the
humiliating climbdown of tearing up a deal that had started to come under intense scrutiny at both Westminster and Holyrood in Edinburgh.

British shoppers have been told that shortages of courgettes, aubergines and salad ingredients such as lettuce and celery, will continue until spring – and that any stock making it to local supermarkets will have substantially higher prices. The lion’s share of fresh vegetables we eat in winter comes from Murcia and Valencia in southern Spain, but the regions’ crops have been hit by flooding, frost and now snow, the Observer reported.

BT and Sky will make their first round of bids as they pitch for win right to broadcast Champions League football once BT's £897m, three-year deal comes to an end in 2020, with ITV potentially involved as a partner. With 21st Century Fox planning to take full control of Sky, the Sunday Telegraph said this has fuelled market speculation that this international scale could convince UEFA to sell its rights on a pan-European or even global basis, locking out its rivals in the UK, Germany and Italy.

Big energy companies are planning to raise prices in contradiction of regulator Ofgem, which last week warned there were no grounds for hiking standard tariff prices this winter. Executives at the big six firms have accused the regulator of underestimating their costs, with total costs in this month having risen close to 15% on the same time last year, the Mail on Sunday reported.

One of Bovis Homes’ biggest investors is pushing for the housebuilder to merge with larger rival Berkeley Group, the Sunday Times reported. With Bovis chief executive David Ritchie's resignation over December's shock profit warning, 6.4% shareholder Schroder Investment Management is understood to have written to Berkeley's management to urge them to consider a deal.

The UK car industry will this week reveal the strongest manufacturing figures for more than four decades, though
Mike Hawes, head of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, will appear before MPs this week and is widely expected to deliver a dire warning of the threat faced by the industry. After the Prime Minister said the UK will definitely be leaving the European single market, the Mail on Sunday said the SMMT is now keen to secure a customs deal with the bloc that would save it from billions of pounds in tariffs on cars exported there.

The London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Boerse are increasingly confident French authorities will not try to disrupt their proposed merger, as doing so would derail any French attempt to make a land grab for euro clearing following Brexit, according to people close to the deal cited by the Sunday Telegraph. Blocking the Anglo-German exchange merger would scupper the sale of LCH SA, the continental arm of the clearing house LCH.Clearnet, to Euronext, leaving the French without a top-tier clearing house to process any business were it to be repatriated to the eurozone from the City of London.

Premier Foods could face an “unmitigated disaster” if it fails to extend its lucrative licensing deal with Cadbury’s parent Mondelez, some City analysts fear. After the company last week issued a major profit warning, the Sunday Telegraph reported doubts were emerging over its Cadbury cake licence that fly in the face of the company assurance that it continues to enjoy “an excellent working relationship with Mondelez”.

Following price rises post-Brexit in Marmite, Mr Kipling cakes and shoes, now Dunelm chief executive John Browett has warned the likes of pillows, duvets and other homewares are due for a hike. Dunelm imports most of its stock and expects prices to rise on more than two-thirds of the stores' products, through Browett says the rises will be short-lived.

Add Nestlé to this list, said the Sunday Times, as the consumer goods giant plans to demand double-digit price rises for its products from Britain’s supermarkets based on the pound’s decline since the Brexit vote. The Swiss company is understood to have asked the grocery industry to pay more for items such as Nescafé coffee and Pure Life mineral water, with Sainsbury's having already appeared to have passed some rises on.

Heineken faces a publican rebellion that threatens to take the fizz out of its £400m takeover of Punch Taverns, the Sunday Telegraph said, ahead of the shareholder vote due to take place in less than three weeks. With the Danish brewer predicted to carry out its usual strategy of filling the 1,900 new pubs with its own beer and cider brands, an urgent appeal has been launched by Punch publicans to officials within Government and the Pub Code Adjudicator.

Transport secretary Chris Grayling is mulling a potential break-up of one of Britain’s biggest rail franchises as he tries to introduce more competition in the industry, the Sunday Times reported. Officials are exploring the possibility of splitting Great Western, which links London, south Wales, Devon and Cornwall, when the deal to run it ends in three years, with the creation of a separate Devon and Cornwall rail franchise.

Long-suffering Southern rail passengers face further disruption on Monday due to a strike by conductors. The Observer said planned action by drivers on the network on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday was suspended last week after Southern’s owner, Go-Ahead Group joint venture Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), and drivers’ union Aslef agreed to talks.

Weetabix, the UK’s second biggest cereal brand, is being circled by rivals as Chinese owners Bright Foods look to offload it, reported the Sunday Telegraph. Cheerios maker Nestle and Lucky Charms owner General Mills are understood to have expressed an interest, along with Quaker Oats owner PepsiCo and Turky's United Biscuits owner group Pladis.

Unilever has agreed to a French co-branding deal with Playbrush, a gadget that makes a game out of using a toothbrush using Bluetooth and motion sensors to encourage children to brush their teeth. With funding from University College London, inventor Paul Varga has already sold 60,000 of the device, where a toothbrush is attached to a Raspberry Pi microcomputer.

A new study into BPA has raised concerns for plastics and packaging companies, as it has found employees who directly handle the plasticizing chemical had urine levels of BPA around 70 times greater than that of the average US adult, the Observer reported. The research into BPA, which is used in the production of plastic food containers, the lining of food and soda cans, was carried out by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Niosh), who exmained BPA levels in the urine of workers employed at six companies that either manufacture BPA or use it to make other products.