Press Round-Up Short (Premium)
Thursday newspaper round-up: BNPL, Saga, Farfetch
More than a quarter of adults in the UK will use buy now, pay later to help with festive spending, research suggests, with the proportion rising to more than half of parents with young children. The survey for Citizens Advice also found 11% of respondents used such credit schemes to pay for groceries, a proportion that rose to 35% for regular BNPL users. – Guardian.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Telecoms providers, redundancy capital, Telegraph
A Tory MP who accused the gambling regulator of being too “heavy handed” has received more than £8,000 in hospitality and payments from the betting industry this year, including tickets to see Madonna. Craig Whittaker, the MP for Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, criticised the Gambling Commission in an article for the Conservative Home website last week. – Guardian.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Shein, private rents, Volkswagen, Twitter
Fast fashion giant Shein has reportedly lodged confidential paperwork with US securities regulators, informing them of an intention to go public in the US. The listing would likely be the largest initial public offering (IPO) in years. – Guardian.
Sunday newspaper round-up: Rolls-Royce, Minimum wage, Metro Bank
Rolls-Royce chief Tufan Erginbilgic is expected to push for government backing for the company's small modular reactors. The engineer has already received approximately £200m in government funding and has a lead on its domestic and foreign rivals, but Erginbligic is worried that they might catch up. The government's lukewarm attitude may also make potential foreign buyers hesitate. - The Financial Mail on Sunday .
Monday newspaper round-up: BoE, office space, BAE Systems
The Bank of England’s reliance on “inadequate” forecasting models and a lack of intellectual diversity within its most senior ranks contributed to inflation sticking at among the highest levels in decades, a Lords report has found. In a report critical of Threadneedle Street, the powerful Lords economic affairs committee said the central bank had made “errors” in its handling of the inflation shock triggered after the Covid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Friday newspaper round-up: P&O Cruises, John Lewis, Telegraph
P&O Cruises and fellow cruise firm Cunard have made provision to fire and rehire more than 900 UK-based crew unless they accept salary cuts and more flexible working arrangements. The affected crew include officers on the British flagship, the luxury ocean liner Queen Mary 2, and nine other ships operated under Carnival UK, which is part of the $18bn-listed Carnival group. – Guardian.
Thursday newspaper round-up: Energy bills, electric cars, oil prices
Households will begin the new year with a 5% increase in energy bills after the regulator raised the price cap to an average of £1,928 a year for the typical gas and electricity bill. Ofgem raised the maximum price that energy suppliers can charge their customers from £1,834 a year for the typical household between October to December, after a rise in global gas market prices after the start of the Israel-Hamas war last month. – Guardian.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Wimbledon, Binance, Nvidia
Tax officials are understood to be examining whether David Cameron failed to fully disclose taxable perks such as flights on private planes when he worked for the collapsed lender Greensill Capital, the Guardian can reveal. In particular, officials are said to be looking at a number of flights that took off or landed near his house in Oxfordshire and also in Cornwall, where the foreign secretary has a holiday home. They are also examining an offshore trust that it is understood was created by Greensill to pay him extra benefits.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Income tax, Cazoo, CBI
Pressure is mounting on Jeremy Hunt to cut taxes in Wednesday’s autumn statement due to evidence that almost 4 million UK workers are to be dragged into paying income tax for the first time. In a crunch week for the government, Rishi Sunak fuelled expectations on Monday that his chancellor could use his speech to the Commons to launch personal tax cuts, saying the government could now “look forward” to the future after making progress on the economy. – Guardian.
Monday newspaper round-up: Tax cuts, Heathrow, The Telegraph
Jeremy Hunt has played down the prospect of immediate income tax cuts, pledging not to do anything in this week’s autumn statement that will fuel inflation. Although some Conservative backbenchers are eager for measures that would be quickly felt by households, the chancellor on Sunday sought to emphasise the need to promote growth and indicated that tax cuts were “not going to happen overnight”. – Guardian.
Friday newspaper round-up: Apple, Amazon, energy bills
People from working-class backgrounds employed in professional careers earn £6,000 less compared to those from other backgrounds in the same jobs, findings from the Social Mobility Foundation show, underscoring the UK’s “shameful” class pay gap. Professionals from poorer upbringings face an average salary of £45,437 – 12% lower than the £51,728 for people from more affluent origins – in research based on quarterly Labour Force Surveys from 2014 to 2022.
Thursday newspaper round-up: Offshore windfarms, hydrogen heating trial, Amazon
The Cyprus police force is investigating how an oligarch attempted to transfer a £1bn stake in a public company on the day he was placed under EU sanctions, government insiders have told the Guardian. News of the involvement of the financial crime squad came as the Cypriot government and the European Union responded to revelations that local service providers appear to have played a key role in enabling Russian oligarchs to shield assets from EU sanctions within days of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Manchester City, Selfridges, 'British Isa'
Manchester City have announced record-breaking revenue for the 2022-23 financial year. The club confirmed income of £712. 8m, outstripping the Premier League record £648. 4m reported by Manchester United last month. City’s figure is up from £613m and the club almost doubled its profit to £80. 4m, from £41. 7m, despite a large increase in wages. The 2022-23 season was highly successful for City, who won a Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup treble, boosting finances through commercial and broadcast revenue.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Avon, Google, OBR
Ministers have come under further pressure to expand the financial support for Britons struggling with the cost of living crisis, after a committee of MPs found some had “slipped through the safety net”. The cross-party work and pensions committee said that support payments designed to help people cope with soaring household bills had proved insufficient to meet the scale of the problem and offered only a “short-term reprieve” for many. – Guardian.
Monday newspaper round-up: Co-op, Issa brothers, Victoria
The boss of Co-op is calling on the government to take more action to tackle retail crime amid a warning it has reached record levels as criminal gangs are operating “exempt from consequences”. Co-op said its latest data showed that of the nearly 3,000 occasions this year where security teams detained serious offenders in its stores, the police failed to show up almost four-fifths of the time, leading to a “dangerous pressure cooker” environment that puts store workers and communities at risk.
Sunday newspaper round-up: Tax fraud scandal, Royal Mail, Metro Bank
More claims against banks and individuals operating in the City linked to the so-called Cum-Ex case are likely. The tax fraud scandal - Europe's largest ever - is estimated to have cost German taxpayers alone almost £10bn. Among the lenders being investigated are Barclays, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, BNP and Nomura, together with law firms and auditors. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that Danish authorities could pursue an alleged £1. 4bn Cum-Ex fraud in London.
Friday newspaper round-up: Thames Water, NatWest, Metro Bank
Thames Water has pumped at least 72bn litres of sewage into the River Thames since 2020 – roughly equal to 29,000 Olympic swimming pools – new figures reveal. Water firms have no legal obligation to report the amount of sewage discharged, only the number of hours that it was released. But campaigners argue this data is insufficient as this does not properly quantify how much sewage is in England’s rivers. – Guardian.
Thursday newspaper round-up: Lloyd's of London insurers, rail strikes, Anglo American
Insurers operating in the Lloyd’s of London market are the world’s biggest underwriters of fossil fuel projects, research has found. Fifty years after the insurance industry first warned about the impact of the climate crisis, it is continuing to contribute to the climate emergency, the Insure Our Future campaign, a global group of 24 NGOs, said in its annual “scorecard” on 30 major insurers and their involvement in fossil fuels. – Guardian.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Public investment, debanking, housing crisis, recession fears
The economy is on course for another “decade in the doldrums” unless politicians increase public investment by £15 billion annually, starting at the autumn statement in two weeks’ time, a think tank has claimed. Growth is poised to limp along over the coming years and to remain far below its pre-2008 financial crisis trend, extending a 15-year squeeze on household living standards, according to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. - The Times.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Royal Mail, energy security, Shein-Topshop
Royal Mail is to lose its 360-year-old monopoly on delivering parcels from Post Office branches, after concerns about poor quality of service persuaded the postal service to sign deals with rivals Evri and DPD in the run-up to Christmas. The two couriers would be added to the options available at the counter from later this month, the Post Office said, with customers given a choice for the first time. – Guardian.