Thursday newspaper round-up: Starbucks, house prices, Italy, Virgin Atlantic
A £1m fund to help expand and improve paper cup recycling facilities across the UK will be launched on Thursday by the coffee giant Starbucks and environmental charity Hubbub. Local authorities, recycling companies and social enterprises will be invited to bid for grants of up to £100,000 on behalf of their communities to create at least 10 large-scale recycling programmes. – Guardian
Millennials in advanced economies around the world are being squeezed out of the ranks of the middle class, including in Britain, as pay growth stalls and house prices skyrocket, according to the OECD. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said that for every every generation since the baby boom of the 1940s, across 40 major countries, the middle-income group had shrunk and its economic influence weakened. – Guardian
Britain's housing market continues to stagnate as enquiries from new buyers fell for an eighth consecutive month in March, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics). More than a quarter of the 300 chartered surveyors questioned in its latest monthly residential market survey said they had seen a fall in buyer demand across all parts of the UK, causing the number of agreed sales to drop. Rics blamed the continuing "Brexit impasse". – Telegraph
Italy is one small shock away from a sovereign default of global scale. The International Monetary Fund is not allowed to state this openly but that is the message of its latest Fiscal Monitor. The public debt ratio is to ratchet up from 132.1pc of GDP in 2018, to 134.4pc in 2020, and 138.5pc in 2024. The final figure is academic. Bond vigilantes will take matters into their hands long before then. – Telegraph
An American investment bank is to go into factory-built housing for the first time, investing £75 million in a British company that constructs homes off site in controlled conditions. Goldman Sachs is taking a stake in Top Hat, which was set up in 2016 by Jordan Rosenhaus, an American entrepreneur. The company has a factory in Derbyshire and residents will soon move into its first development, in Kent. – The Times
Virgin Atlantic has fallen to a second consecutive annual loss as profits suffered as a result of higher fuel costs and economic uncertainty linked to Brexit. The airline said it was unlikely it would return to profitability until 2021, when it expected to reap the rewards of new routes and the acquisition of Flybe, the regional carrier. Virgin Atlantic recorded a pre-tax loss of £26.1 million 2018, down from £49 million in 2017. – The Times