Thursday newspaper round-up: Sainsbury's, Ryanair, Amazon

Sainsbury’s is to cut 500 head office jobs while another 650 jobs are at risk as the supermarket closes one of its online grocery packing centres. The UK’s second largest supermarket will also close offices in Coventry and Victoria in London and move out of two of the five remaining floors it occupies at its London head office in Holborn, another two floors at its Avebury office in Milton Keynes and one in Manchester as many staff permanently switch to working part-time from home. - Guardian

Michael O’Leary has described the UK government’s support for the airline industry during the pandemic as “lamentable”, as aviation leaders called for fresh help and warned of a long recovery ahead. The Ryanair chief executive said fares would be cut this summer to boost demand and that he hoped for up to 70% of normal passenger numbers from July. O’Leary said vaccines would enable travel, but added that regulations on border controls were “bonkers”. He described hotel quarantine as “completely unpoliceable”, saying the airline had seen no medical evidence to support it. - Guardian

Amazon has opened its first physical grocery store in Britain as the online giant continues to explore an assault on UK supermarkets. The 2,500 sq ft Amazon Fresh shop in Ealing, west London, will sell hundreds of own-label “By Amazon” products such as milk, butter, eggs alongside established brands. - Telegraph

The Bank of England has ordered a lender controlled by Sanjeev Gupta to repay its retail depositors as concerns over the tycoon’s steel empire mount. In a rare intervention, the Bank’s Prudential Regulatory Authority has told Wyelands Bank to return deposits to its savers. Wyelands has the resources to pay the money back in full after Gupta recapitalised the bank. - The Times

The country’s biggest guarantor loans provider came under more selling pressure after it was outed as the most complained-about lender in the country. A total of 12,854 complaints about Amigo were lodged with the Financial Ombudsman Service between July and December 2020 — ten times more than in the first six months. Typically, the ombudsman upholds about one in three complaints but 88 per cent of those who complained about Amigo in the second half of last year were successful. - The Times