Sunday newspaper round-up: UK growth, Sainsbury-Asda, bookies, Capita, Apple
Traders fear the pound is about to come under further selling pressure amid mounting evidence that the economy is grinding to a halt. An ominous new survey, published today by the CBI, suggests that the first quarter’s dismal growth figures are the start of a prolonged economic slowdown rather than a weather-related blip. - Sunday Times
President Trump has threatened to take on the European Union over trade, saying that it “sounds so nice” but was “formed to take advantage of the United States”. The EU was temporarily spared from a round of tariffs on metal imports imposed by Mr Trump’s administration in March, although the exemption is due to expire. - Sunday Times
Theresa May is facing another major rebellion over Brexit amid a cross-party move to kill off any attempt to crash out of the EU without a deal. A group of MPs and peers has been carefully crafting new laws that will hand parliament guaranteed powers to soften any deal and send the government back to the negotiating table. - Observer
Sainsbury’s and Asda were last night putting the finishing touches to an audacious £12bn merger that would end Tesco’s decades-long reign as Britain’s biggest supermarket chain. The tie-up would create a grocery behemoth with more than 1,200 supermarkets, nearly £50bn in annual sales and 355,000 employees across Britain. - Sunday Times
...Pressure is mounting on the competition watchdog to launch an investigation into a potential £10bn-plus tie up between Sainsbury’s and Asda amid fears customers could be left worse off. The proposed deal - set to be announced on Monday - is facing calls for a full-blown inquiry to ensure customers are not confronted by rising prices or less competition. - Sunday Telegraph
...A Sainsbury’s-Asda combination plus Tesco would have almost 59% of the market between them. At no point since the invention of supermarkets would there ever have been a hope of getting a regulatory thumbs-up. - Observer
The Baltic Dry Index has surged 45pc in just three weeks, easing fears that the world economy has slammed on the brakes. The index dropped off sharply from its four-year high during the first quarter of the year amid fears that buoyant global growth had hit the buffers but has started the second quarter on a stronger footing. - Sunday Telegraph
Bosses from Britain’s leading bookmakers have written to the culture secretary, Matt Hancock, in a last-ditch attempt to prevent an aggressive crackdown on fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs). GVC, William Hill, Betfred, Scotbet and Jenningsbet have urged Hancock not to “sacrifice betting shops” by imposing a £2 limit on the machines. - Sunday Times
The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) effectively outlawed sports betting in the USA but after the rise of an underground industry the country is nearing a watershed moment. The supreme court is considering whether to repeal PASPA after a protracted legal challenge by the state of New Jersey – and the signs are that New Jersey will get its way in what Paddy Power Betfair's US boss says is “the closest the US market has come to opening up”. - Observer
Private equity firms are circling troubled outsourcing firm Capita after it announced moves to shore up its finances. Capita last week unveiled £513 million losses and said it needed to raise £701 million from shareholders and has since received more than 100 letters from private equity firms in the UK and the US asking to buy parts of the business. - Mail on Sunday
One of WPP's biggest investors is demanding the advertising giant launch a probe to find and punish the person responsible for leaking details of an investigation into chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell. David Herro of Harris Associates - WPP's second largest investor with a 6 per cent stake - met chairman Roberto Quarta and called for an inquiry into the explosive leak, which Sorrell's camp believes must have come from a board member due to the level of detail involved. - Mail on Sunday
Jeff Fairburn, the chief executive of Persimmon, is facing questions from City investor over whether he has breached company law by insisting on taking a £75 million bonus. In an astonishing attack at Persimmon’s stormy annual meeting, Euan Stirling, head of stewardship at Aberdeen Standard Investments, accused Fairburn and his fellow directors of having ‘endangered’ the company’s long-term success. - Mail on Sunday
Twitter sold data to the Cambridge University academic who harvested millions of Facebook users’ information without their knowledge. Aleksandr Kogan, who created tools for Cambridge Analytica that allowed the political consultancy to psychologically profile and target voters, bought the data from the microblogging website in 2015, before the recent scandal came to light. - Sunday Telegraph
Apple is expected to announce a $100bn (£73bn) shareholder bonanza this week as it starts spending the hundreds of billions of dollars the tech giant has brought back to America from overseas. Wall Street is braced for the iPhone maker to announce plans to return tens of billions of dollars to investors in dividends and share buybacks when it reports its latest sales. The monster capital return programme is likely to smooth over signs of slowing iPhone growth. - Sunday Telegraph
When easyJet tycoon Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou came across food delivery service easyFood, he sent in his lawyers. But he liked the business so much he bought a stake in a company with ambitions to break Just Eat’s stranglehold on the online food delivery market. - Sunday Times
High Street struggler Mothercare is seeking outside financing as it races to seal a rescue package by the middle of May. The troubled chain has been working with investment bank Rothschild to explore alternative financing options beyond its current lenders. - Sunday Telegraph
Struggling retail chain Carpetright is sitting on £19 million of unfulfilled customer orders as it presses ahead with a refinancing. The company last week agreed a restructuring plan that means dozens of landlords will take a cut in rent payments and 92 stores will close down. - Mail on Sunday
An influential MP wants the Government to investigate a group that was set up to sue Royal Bank of Scotland on behalf of small investors who were misled in the financial crisis. Norman Lamb – who is co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fair Business Banking – will this week write to Justice Secretary David Gauke asking him to examine the RBS Shareholders Action Group, which was co-founded by a fraudster. - Mail on Sunday
A fresh wave of pay revolts is set to hit the City in the coming weeks as the annual general meeting season begins. At least three shareholders are expected to demand change at London & Associated Properties (LAP), which sold London’s popular Brixton Market for £37.25m on Friday and is run by property mogul Sir Michael Heller and his son. - Sunday Telegraph
Barclays is preparing for a potential showdown with notorious New York-based corporate raider Ed Bramson at its annual general meeting in London on Tuesday. Speculation is rife that Mr Bramson will turn up to the event at the QEII Conference Centre in Westminster, and that he could publicly call for a shake-up of the bank. - Sunday Telegraph
TSB is facing mounting criticism for rushing through a full-scale IT system switch of 1.3 billion customer records in one go, leading to a meltdown and more than a week of outages to vital banking systems. The challenger bank opted for a high risk “big bang” approach to the complex migration from the system it rented from Lloyds to one run by Spanish parent Sabadell. - Sunday Telegraph
‘I think this is the best time to set up a new retailer,’ says Conservative peer and Tory party donor Lord Harris, founder of Carpetright, which he left three years ago. Why? At the grand age of 75, Harris has embarked on a new business with his son and reckons he can take advantage of others’ misfortunes by hiring disillusioned staff and by taking over retail premises more easily – and that includes his former Carpetright empire. - Mail on Sunday
EU member states that fail to live up the European Union’s democratic values could find parts of their EU subsidies being “frozen” until they mend their ways, The Telegraph understands. Under proposals to be unveiled in Brussels this week by Guenther Oettinger, the EU’s budget commissioner, Eastern EU states like Poland and Hungary could feel a financial squeeze if they were deemed to have failed to live up to the founding values of the EU. - Sunday Telegraph
The prospect of tighter immigration rules after Brexit risks choking off a boom in Britain’s burgeoning fintech industry, according to a new study by lobby group Innovate Finance. The report says the financial technology sector is on course to top 100,000 employees by 2030, with 30,000 jobs set to be created. - Sunday Times
Home ownership among young families has plummeted across every corner of Britain over the past 35 years, according to a devastating inquiry into the housing crisis facing millennials. The proportion of families headed by a 25- to 34-year-old that own their own home has more than halved in some regions, showing that the crisis goes far beyond London. - Observer
The Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska has agreed in principle to reduce his stake in Russia’s En+ Group, which manages his aluminium and hydropower assets, to less than 50%. Both Deripaska and En+ were targeted by sweeping US sanctions on some of Russia’s biggest companies and businessmen on 6 April. - Observer/Reuters