Wednesday newspaper round-up: Trump, cyber attacks, Jes Staley
Donald Trump’s plan to encourage US companies to repatriate profits held offshore will allow the 50 biggest American corporations to save at least $300bn (£240bn), according to research by Oxfam. The US president has promised that he will get America’s biggest companies to bring their vast offshore cash piles back to US soil by offering a one-off tax holiday. The plan is to tax repatriated money at 10% rather than at the statutory rate of 35%. – Guardian
Failure to meet the internet-inspired aspirations of people in poor countries runs the risk of creating the conditions for war, terrorism and increased migration, the president of the World Bank has warned. Speaking in London ahead of the Bank’s spring meeting next week, Jim Yong Kimsaid an urgent development push was needed in order to meet the demands for a better life by those in developing countries, increasingly aware through their smartphones of how rich people lived. – Guardian
Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, will appear in court at the start of June over allegations that the lender did not give investors a full picture of its finances at the time of a crunch fundraising in 2008. Thousands of investors are bringing a civil lawsuit against RBS after buying shares in a £12bn fundraising at the height of the financial crisis, six months before the bank had to be rescued in a £45.5bn Government bailout. – Telegraph
FTSE 100 companies that suffer serious cyber attacks risk taking a £120m hit to their market value, according to the first study to establish a link between hacks and falling share prices. Oxford Economics, which studied 65 severe breaches at listed companies, found that they tend to lead to share prices falling by an average of 1.8pc. – Telegraph
More than two million savers are set to join a rush to grab a market-beating interest rate of 2.2 per cent after the government’s National Savings & Investment department yesterday released a savings bond with a guaranteed return that will beat what most banks and building societies offer. The Treasury expects to raise £7 billion from the bond offer, the first of its kind for more than two years. – The Times
American prosecutors have joined the widening inquiry into an attempt by the boss of Barclays to unmask a whistleblower who raised concerns over the bank’s recruitment of one of his former colleagues. The US Department of Justice is the latest agency to investigate Barclays and Jes Staley, its chief executive, as it examines whether he and other senior directors of the bank broke rules put in place to protect whistleblowers. – The Times