• Friday newspaper round-up: Energy price cap, Mike Lynch, News Corp

  Friday 24 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - The energy price cap in Great Britain will fall to the equivalent of £1,568,a year this summer after a drop in wholesale gas prices. Set by the energy regulator, Ofgem, the cap reflects the average annual dual-fuel bill for 29m households and takes effect from July until the end of September. The cap, which is set quarterly, will fall £122 in July from its current level of £1,690, easing the pressure on household finances. - Guardian

• Thursday newspaper round-up: Mike Lynch, smart meters, Very Group

  Thursday 23 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - San Francisco federal courthouse on Thursday as a key witness in his own criminal fraud trial, which began in March. US authorities have charged the former software tycoon with 16 counts of wire fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy relating to his company's acquisition deal with Hewlett-Packard in 2011. If convicted, Lynch faces up to 25 years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty. - Guardian

• Wednesday newspaper round-up: Anglesey power station, electric cars, Eurostar passengers

  Wednesday 22 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - Ministers have earmarked north Wales as the site of a large-scale nuclear power plant, which is part of plans to resuscitate Britain's nuclear power ambitions. Wylfa on Anglesey (Ynys Môn) has been named as the preferred site for the UK's third major nuclear power plant in a generation, coming after EDF's Hinkley Point C nuclear plant, which is under construction in Somerset, and its Sizewell C nuclear project planned for Suffolk. - Guardian

• Tuesday newspaper round-up: New homes, AI, Mike Ashley

  Tuesday 21 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - A Labour government would aim to announce the sites for a series of new towns within a year of taking office, with the promise that homes would be built in them by the end of a first term, Angela Rayner is to say in a speech. Giving more detail to a plan first outlined in Keir Starmer's party conference speech in October, Rayner will tell a housing conference that Labour will strongly support private developers who create high-quality and affordable housing. - Guardian

• Monday newspaper round-up: Border checks, house prices, apprenticeships

  Monday 20 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - Post-Brexit border checks will cost UK businesses £470m a year, the government's public spending watchdog has said. Plans to bring in border checks on goods coming from the EU faced "significant issues" including critical shortages of inspectors before their introduction last month, the National Audit Office said in a report. - Guardian

• Friday newspaper round-up: Bank branches, mortgages, Northern Rock

  Friday 17 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - The number of UK bank branches that have shut their doors for good over the last nine years will pass 6,000 on Friday, and by the end of the year the pace of closures may leave 33 parliamentary constituencies - including two in London - without a single branch. The tally is being published by the consumer group Which? as it seeks to make the "avalanche" of closures and the "disastrous" impact they can have on local communities an election battleground. - Guardian

• Thursday newspaper round-up: JCB, M&S, smart meters

  Thursday 16 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - The British digger maker JCB, owned by the billionaire Bamford family, continued to build and supply equipment for the Russian market months after saying it had stopped exports because of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the Guardian can reveal. Russian customs records show that JCB, whose owners are major donors to the Conservative party, continued to make new products available for Russian dealers well after 2 March 2022, when the company publicly stated that it had "voluntarily paused exports" to Russia. - Guardian

• Wednesday newspaper round-up: Brexit border outages, Boeing, Stellantis

  Wednesday 15 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - Lorries carrying perishable food and plants from the EU are being held for up to 20 hours at the UK's busiest Brexit border post as failures with the government's IT systems delay imports entering Britain. Businesses have described the government's new border control checks as a "disaster" after IT outages led to lorries carrying meat, cheese and cut flowers being held for long periods, reducing the shelf life of their goods and prompting retailers to reject some orders. - Guardian

• Tuesday newspaper round-up: Tesco, OpenAI, housebuilding

  Tuesday 14 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - Tesco is facing criticism from "shocked" charities who say they are struggling to distribute unwanted food to homeless and hungry people after they claim the retailer brought in rules that mean unwanted food can only be collected in the evening. The supermarket group has switched to a new system which asks charities to pick up unwanted food, such as items reaching their best before date, only in the evening when a store is closing rather than the following morning, the charities have claimed. - Guardian

• Monday newspaper round-up: BT, ultra-long mortgages, Fever-Tree

  Monday 13 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - BT has said it is increasingly using artificial intelligence to help it detect and neutralise threats from hackers targeting business customers amid repeated attacks on companies. The £10.5bn group is aiming to build up its business protecting customers from online criminals and has patented technology that uses AI to analyse attack data to allow companies to protect their tech infrastructure. British businesses are routinely facing hacking attempts, and some recent high-profile victims have included including the outsourcer Capita, Royal Mail and British Airways. - Guardian

• Friday newspaper round-up: Tata, Post Office, John Lewis, KPMG

  Friday 10 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - Members of a steelworkers' union have voted to take industrial action in protest at planned job losses at Tata. The company last month rejected a plan by unions to keep open a blast furnace at the Port Talbot steelworks, ending hopes of avoiding as many as 2,800 job losses. - Guardian

• Thursday newspaper round-up: Tax rises, smart meters, Selfridges

  Thursday 09 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - The next government will be forced to hit voters with post-election tax rises and delay net zero investment unless it is prepared to rip up Treasury rules for managing the state finances, a leading thinktank has said. The National Institute for Economic and Social Research (Niesr) called for a radical overhaul of the self-imposed constraints imposed on government borrowing and debt as it warned that persistently weak growth and lower inflation would make hitting the rules more difficult. - Guardian

• Wednesday newspaper round-up: E-gates, Mike Ashley, Brexit

  Wednesday 08 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - More than 800,000 people in Europe and the US appear to have been duped into sharing card details and other sensitive personal data with a vast network of fake online designer shops apparently operated from China. An international investigation by the Guardian, Die Zeit and Le Monde gives a rare inside look at the mechanics of what the UK's Chartered Trading Standards Institute has described as one of the largest scams of its kind, with 76,000 fake websites created. - Guardian

• Tuesday newspaper round-up: House prices, employers, Wayve

  Tuesday 07 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - Universal Music Group could become the latest company to face an embarrassing shareholder revolt this AGM season, after an influential advisory firm urged investors to reject an "excessive" €139m (£119m) payout for its chief executive, Lucian Grainge. Glass Lewis said it had "severe reservations" about supporting the Dutch-American music company's pay decisions, which included a €92m share-based bonus for its British-born CEO that easily made up for a 51% cut in his salary, to €7.5m. - Guardian

• Sunday newspaper round-up: Darktrace, National Insurance, Royal Mail

  Sunday 05 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - An aura of mystery continues to linger over whether the biggest of Darktrace's shareholders are prepared to support Thoma Bravo's £4.2bn takeover. Among those is Mike Lynch, who is currently facing trial in the US over fraud claims linked to executive search software outfit Autonomy. Also unclear is the position of the Darktrace Employee Benefit Trust, which owned just under 8% of the company's shares. The trust is managed by Equiniti, which has nothing to do with the decision. - The Financial Mail on Sunday

• Friday newspaper round-up: Paramount Global, Apple, Coutts

  Friday 03 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - Paramount Global's share price soared on Thursday following a report that Sony Pictures and Apollo Global Management had made a $26bn offer for the troubled media giant. According to the Wall Street Journal, the offer was made on Wednesday by Sony's chief executive, Tony Vinciquerra, and Aaron Sobel, a partner at Apollo. Paramount's shares rose 12% on the news. - Guardian

• Thursday newspaper round-up: Online gamblers, PwC, London taxi drivers

  Thursday 02 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - Online gamblers who lose £500 or more a month are to face extra checks from August, the regulator has confirmed, as part of a large package of measures aimed at protecting the most vulnerable customers. The extra checks come in from 30 August, and the threshold for qualifying will fall to £150 of online betting losses a month from 28 February next year, the Gambling Commission said. - Guardian

• Wednesday newspaper round-up: Amazon, dividends, Weardale Lithium

  Wednesday 01 May 2024

  (Sharecast News) - Amazon profits soared once again in the first quarter of 2024, the company announced on Tuesday - the latest in a series of robust earnings reports for the retail giant. The company attributed the boost to artificial intelligence and advertising sales. Amazon reported overall revenue of $143.3bn in the first three months of the year - up 13% from the same period in 2023 and surpassing Wall Street expectations of $142.65bn. The e-commerce giant reported an increase of more than 200% to $15bn, with net income more than tripling to $10.4bn from $3.17bn at the same time in 2023. - Guardian

• Tuesday newspaper round-up: Meta, ExxonMobil, Very Group

  Tuesday 30 Apr 2024

  (Sharecast News) - The Federal Communications Commission on Monday fined the largest US wireless carriers nearly $200m for illegally sharing access to customers' location information. The FCC is finalizing fines first proposed in February 2020, including $80m for T-Mobile; $12m for Sprint, which T-Mobile has since acquired; $57m for AT&T, and nearly $47m for Verizon. - Guardian

• Monday newspaper round-up: Thames Water, Brexit, Babylon

  Monday 29 Apr 2024

  (Sharecast News) - Senior Whitehall officials fear Thames Water's financial collapse could trigger a rise in government borrowing costs not seen since the chaos of the Liz Truss mini-budget, the Guardian can reveal. Such is their concern about the impact on wider borrowing costs for the UK, even beyond utilities and infrastructure, that they believe Thames should be renationalised before the general election. Officials in the Treasury and the UK's Debt Management Office fear that, unless the UK's biggest water company is renationalised as soon as possible, "prolonged uncertainty" about its fate could "damage confidence in UK plc at a sensitive time", with elections in the UK and the US later this year. - Guardian

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