Thursday newspaper round-up: Brexit, Tesla, energy cap, RBS

The boss of Britain’s biggest pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline, has urged the government to sign a two-year transition deal by April to ensure the industry can cope with the impact of Brexit. Emma Walmsley, GSK’s chief executive, said the tight deadline was key to giving businesses the clarity needed to invest. “The most important thing is that we get a transition period of at least two years, starting from March 2019, but … secured by April 2018, and we need to make sure that the negotiations that are ongoing are very clearly focused on patient safety and the continued supply of medicines to patients.” - Guardian

The tech billionaire Elon Musk sent one of his Tesla electric cars into space yesterday, a day before the company that built it announced its biggest ever quarterly loss. Musk’s Tesla electric car and energy storage company lost $675.4m in the three months ending 31 December, the company announced on Thursday, compared with a loss of $121m for the same period last year. – Guardian

Salaries are rising at the fastest pace since 2015 as companies facing a shortage of skilled workers have to pay more to hire new staff. Wages are struggling to rise in the wider economy but those who move jobs are attracting a premium, recruiters have found, adding to indicators that the sharp fall in unemployment in recent years is at last starting to feed through into earnings. – Telegraph

The energy regulator’s plan to cap household tariffs threatens to strangle the retail market by slashing profit margins and limiting competition to within a range of just £29 a year on an average bill, say critics. The regulator laid out its plans to extend the so-called “safeguard tariff” from four million homes which use pre-pay meters to include another one million vulnerable customers who qualify for government help with their bills. – Telegraph

MPs have ordered the Financial Conduct Authority to produce a contentious report into mistreatment of thousands of businesses by Royal Bank of Scotland by next week, after the regulator was criticised for “losing control” of the investigation. In an embarrassing blow for Andrew Bailey, the FCA chief executive who is a contender to be the next governor of the Bank of England, the Treasury select committee threatened to use its powers to compel publication of the regulatory inquiry into RBS’s Global Restructuring Group. – The Times

Barclays has offered a concession to angry pension fund members, saying that its core British retail banking operation may be able to continue guaranteeing their retirement promises after all. In letters to present and former staff, Barclays said that it would keep its ringfencing plans “under review” and could seek to keep the UK retail bank as sponsor of its large scheme. – The Times