Wednesday newspaper round-up: Tax havens, Apple, Ocado, Brexit

Britain’s overseas territories will be forced to adopt public registers of company ownership at the end of the decade after the government conceded it would have to support a backbench amendment designed to stem the global flow of “dirty money”. Sir Alan Duncan, a Foreign Office minister, told the Commons that ministers recognised “the majority view in this house” and would not oppose an amendment to the sanctions and anti-money laundering bill from Labour’s Margaret Hodge and the Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell. – Guardian

Apple on Tuesday shook off worries that its $1,000 iPhone had failed to live up to the hype – but sales of the world’s most valuable company’s most valuable product are slowing, and Apple has announced a plan to buy its way out of trouble. Releasing its latest quarterly report, Apple announced it had sold 52.2m iPhones in the quarter ending 31 March, at an average price of $728.54. Sales were up 3% compared to last year and slightly lower than analysts had expected, but numbers beat the gloomiest forecasts and were enough to deliver Apple its best second quarter ever, with revenues of over $61bn. That beat the record of $58bn set in 2015. – Guardian

Ocado has agreed a partnership with Swedish supermarket chain ICA in the latest in a flurry of deals that will give investors confidence its shift to focus on becoming a supplier of white label technology is beginning to pay off. The FTSE 250 firm will build a warehouse staffed by robots outside Stockholm and allow ICA, which is Sweden’s biggest grocer with a market share of 36pc, to use its ecommerce and logistics technology. Ocado said the deal would be earnings neutral this year, with small increases in capex spending in future years to invest in building the technology. – Telegraph

A startup dubbed the “Uber for carers” has raised $17m (£12.5m) to help fund its plan to transform the struggling home care industry by buying up failing providers and moving their patients and carers onto its digital platform. Cera, which is backed by Standard Chartered’s ex-chief executive Peter Sands and counts former deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg among its advisers, will use the cash to expand beyond its current focus on London and the south-east by taking over companies in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester. - Telegraph

Theresa May faces a showdown with David Davis and other cabinet Brexiteers today as she tries to convince them of the merits of a customs plan that will keep existing EU tariffs. Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, Liam Fox, the trade secretary, and potentially Michael Gove, the environment secretary, are likely to raise their objections to Mrs May’s plan at a meeting of cabinet’s Brexit sub-committee. - The Times

BMW failed to recall thousands of British cars despite being told by a government agency that they had a potentially fatal fault, an inquest has been told. The German car giant acted only after a former Gurkha soldier was killed in Hampshire. Narayan Gurung, 66, who served in the British Army for 20 years, swerved into a tree on Christmas Day 2016 while trying to avoid a BMW that had stalled suddenly after being affected by an electrical fault. - The Times

Coughs and sneezes spread diseases, as the old doctor’s waiting room poster had it, and now they are spreading to the workplace as the days of pulling a sickie appear to be over. The number of companies reporting a rise in workers going in when they are ill has more than tripled since 2010, according to a survey of hundreds of British employers, but the *desire to impress the boss and keep working has been criticised by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development for damaging the economy*. - The Times

Small and medium-sized housebuilders are struggling with a sharp rise in costs for materials, according to the Federation of Master Builders. Britain’s largest trade association for the construction industry said that nearly all small housebuilders had reported that the cost of construction materials, such as timber and bricks, had risen in the first three months of the year. - The Times