Wednesday newspaper round-up: Amazon, Google, Brexit, Rolls-Royce

Amazon has been accused of continuing to underpay corporation tax in the UK despite nearly tripling the payment from a key British division to £14m. Amazon UK Services, the company’s warehouse and logistics operation that employs more than two-thirds of its 27,500-plus UK workforce, said its corporation tax contribution had risen by nearly £10m in the year to December 2018 from the £4.7m paid in 2017. – Guardian

The British government is facing growing outrage from the European commission and five EU member states over its plans to leave some decommissioned oil rigs in the North Sea, with one senior German official describing the UK’s proposal as a “grotesque idea” that amounts to a “ticking timebomb”. Several hundred oil drilling platforms in the North Sea are due to be decommissioned over the next three decades as they approach the end of their operational lifetime. - Guardian

Jeremy Corbyn, the scourge of bankers and avowed opponent of capitalism, is winning support from unexpected new quarters: two of the biggest global banks operating in the City of London are warming to the Labour leader. Unlikely as it may seem, he is now seen as the lesser of two evils by analysts at Citibank and Deutsche Bank, respectively American and German titans of the financial system. – Telegraph

Google faces further pressure over the search giant's dominance after multiple US states joined forces to investigate whether the company has behaved anti-competitively. The monopoly probe, brought by more than half the nation's attorneys general, who are lawyers that represent each state, is expected to be announced in Washington on September 9, the Washington Post reported. – Telegraph

A group of the world’s leading business federations from Japan to the US have warned Britain against crashing out of the European Union without a deal. The organisations, representing four million companies from eight countries, say a no-deal Brexit would “create substantial disruption for businesses, workers, farmers and regulators” and has made them “gravely concerned”. – The Times

The cull of middle management at Rolls-Royce has prompted 1,700 managers at the aerospace engineer’s headquarters in Derby to join Unite in the biggest outbreak of white-collar industrial trade unionisation in more than a generation. Britain’s biggest union, representing 1.2 million workers mainly in the private sector, has signed an agreement with Rolls-Royce that it will represent middle management and shopfloor bosses across the Derby manufacturing estate as well as those at the satellite facility at Hucknall in Nottinghamshire. – The Times