Friday newspaper round-up: Pay gap, house prices, SoftBank
Britain’s top companies could be forced to disclose and explain the pay gap between their chief executive and workers under plans to be set out by Theresa May as she tries to show her domestic reform agenda remains on track. Despite the Conservatives’ disastrous general election performance, the government is keen to demonstrate that it will get to grips with rising corporate pay in plans expected to be announced next week. – Guardian
The slowdown in the growth of London house prices appears to be abating, leaving Bristol as the UK city with the biggest drop in property prices expansion last month, according to new figures. Upward pressure on prices in the capital is returning following weak annual growth since the start of 2016, amid a fall in sales as homeowners refuse to sell up for lower valuations, according to the property firm Hometrack. – Guardian
Japanese telecoms giant SoftBank is preparing to make a $4.4bn (£3.4bn) investment in a workspace start-up alongside its multi-billion dollar innovation investment fund. The pair plan to back the New York-based provider of shared working space ahead of its expansion into major Asian markets. The group said $3bn will be channelled into new shares in WeWork and buying out its existing investors. The remaining $1.4bn will be used to grow its presence in China, Japan and Korea and Southeast Asia. – Telegraph
Amazon’s assault on Britain’s supermarkets will begin sooner than expected after its £10.7bn takeover of upmarket food retailer Whole Foods cleared without a hitch this week. The pair are set to push ahead their plans for the alliance just days after the deal closed, in a competitive move which is expected to be seismic for the food retailing sector. – Telegraph
Unsecured creditors in BHS will be handed tens of millions of pounds after Sir Philip Green’s high street empire agreed to release the money under a deal with the chain’s liquidators. SHB Realisations, the name used by BHS in liquidation, has dropped a claim filed at the High Court this month against Sir Philip’s Arcadia Group. – The Times
Seventy-five years after it was in the Pacific front line during the Second World War, Wake Island remains a battleground during verbal hostilities between the White House and North Korea. Now it has called in Amec Foster Wheeler, the British engineering services group, to sort out its electrics. The air force base on the Wake Island coral atoll halfway between Hawaii and Tokyo is used as a permanent land-based aircraft carrier for US planes. Amec Foster Wheeler has been called in to deliver a $26 million project to sort out electric cabling and install solar panels and battery power storage. – The Times