Thursday newspaper round-up: Ford, Autonomy, ITV, Ghosn

Ford is planning to close its Bridgend engine plant, with the likely loss of about 1,700 jobs, in the latest blow to the embattled British car industry. The company is meeting workers’ representatives at the south Wales plant on Thursday. A source with knowledge of the process said the plant would shut down. – Guardian

Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, was happy to “throw her predecessor under the bus” blaming him for the disastrous $11.1bn (£8.73bn) acquisition of British tech company Autonomy, the high court heard on Wednesday. Whitman was testifying in the $5bn civil fraud trial of Mike Lynch, the Autonomy founder, and former Autonomy chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain. HP successor companies allege that Lynch and Hussain fraudulently inflated the value of Autonomy ahead of the deal, which was announced in August 2011. - Guardian

ITV has settled a long-running legal battle with the husband and wife duo behind the cancelled reality TV hit Duck Dynasty, who it had accused of fraud and "stunning greed". Scott and Deirdre Gurney sold a majority stake in their Los Angeles-based company, Gurney Productions, for $40m in 2012. ITV had alleged that they then fraudulently inflated profits to ensure the British broadcaster paid top dollar for their remaining 38.5pc stake “while attempting to suck the financial life out of the company” and treating it as their "personal ATM". – Telegraph

Britain is walking into exactly the same traps that eventually cost the European Union a lucrative trade deal with the United States. Donald Trump’s declaration that the NHS would be on the negotiating table in UK-US talks, and fears over chlorinated chicken imports, have dominated the headlines in Britain. – Telegraph

The woes of Carlos Ghosn, the former boss of Renault, deepened yesterday when France backed the carmaker’s criminal complaint over €11 million of expenses he allegedly charged to the company. Claims about the private use of corporate jets, the purchase of villas and a €600,000 payment to a French former justice minister are being investigated by the authorities in France and in the Netherlands, the home of Renault-Nissan BV (RNBV), a subsidiary set up by Mr Ghosn, 65. He engineered the alliance between the French and Japanese carmakers in 1999, creating one of the world’s biggest automotive groups. - The Times