Sunday newspaper round-up: BA delays, BT pensions, sterling devaluation, EE, Vodafone

Disruption from a major British Airways IT failure that affected more than 1,000 flights on Saturday has continued into a second day, leaving more passengers stranded. After all the airline’s flights from Heathrow and Gatwick were grounded on Saturday, services resumed but with cancellations and delays. By 11am, 36 flights from Heathrow had been cancelled and 36 had departed, the BBC reported. There were no cancellations at Gatwick but passengers experienced delays of about 30 minutes. - Observer

Hundreds of thousands of BT pensioners are in line to have their retirement pots capped as the telecoms giant battles the massive black hole in its £50bn fund. The company is appealing to the fund’s trustees and telecoms unions to agree to end accruals in its defined-benefits pension scheme. It has more than 300,000 members and is the UK’s largest private-sector retirement fund. - Sunday Telegraph

Sterling’s Brexit-fuelled decline over the past year has been Britain’s “least successful” currency devaluation in history, an analysis of the latest growth figures has revealed. The UK’s trade balance has worsened by 1.8% of GDP since the final quarter of 2015 — before worries over the EU referendum began to hurt the pound. Rising exports have been outstripped by an even faster rise in imports, according to Samuel Tombs of consultancy Pantheon Macroeconomics. - The Sunday Times

EE and Vodafone have been named as the UK’s two worst mobile phone providers by the consumer group Which? In its sixth annual survey of members, EE and Vodafone, which together account for more than half the market, recorded the worst scores for customer satisfaction. Giffgaff was named as the firm with the happiest mobile customers. - Guardian

The group behind The Edinburgh Woollen Mill has opened a new department store in Carmarthen in Wales, in an effort to revitalise the traditional high street fixture and turn around a trend which has seen retailers such as BHS close their doors. Days, the concept store named after entrepreneur founder Philip Day, stocks goods from other brands in the group such as Jaeger, Peacocks and Austin Reed. - Sunday Telegraph

Acacia Mining is preparing to close a loss-making mine after a row over exports with the Tanzanian government escalated. Shares in the FTSE 250 gold miner plunged nearly 40pc last week after a report by the Tanzanian government accused it of under-representing the amount of gold in the concentrate it exports, potentially depriving the country of millions in royalties. - Sunday Telegraph

The Serious Fraud Office has further delayed its decision on whether to bring any criminal charges against Barclays and former executives at the bank over a 2008 fundraising. A decision is now expected in mid-June, despite the SFO setting an end-of-May deadline earlier in the year – itself a delay from an end of March deadline. - Guardian

Royal Bank of Scotland should be forced to sell off £20 billion of loans to rivals at a discount price to increase competition in the market, according to challenger banks. They have written to Brussels competition officials to lay out their concerns about moves to allow RBS to ditch its sale of Williams & Glyn. That sell-off, which would have included the current accounts and loans issued to thousands of businesses, had been ordered by Brussels following RBS's bail-out. - Mail on Sunday

A scandal over a multibillion-pound alleged fraud at Ukraine’s biggest bank has embroiled the accountancy giant PwC. Ukraine’s central bank claims that some £4.2bn was siphoned out of Privat bank by two of Ukraine’s most powerful offshore oligarchs, Gennady Bogolyubov, who now lives in London in a £60m 10-bedroom home in Belgrave Square, and Swiss-based Igor Kolomoisky. PwC had audited and approved the accounts without any mention of the missing money, according to Katerina Rozhkova, deputy governor of the Ukraine central bank. - The Sunday Times

Energy prices will be thrown back into the political spotlight this week when more than 100,000 households across the UK face a sudden hike in bills of up to £430 a year as their fixed rate deals come to an end. More than a dozen key fixed price deals from seven leading suppliers are set to end on Wednesday. Customers who fail to switch to other deals in time face being moved on to expensive standard variable tariffs. - Mail on Sunday

Hoover’s British and European arm is poised to ditch its battered pension fund in a deal that will cost its owner tens of millions of pounds. The appliance retailer has reached an agreement with its trustees and the Pensions Regulator to send its retirement scheme into the Pension Protection Fund (PPF). The move, likely to be announced this week, will see Hoover’s 7,800 pension fund members transferred to the industry lifeboat. - The Sunday Times

It sounds like heresy but Steve Rowe, chief executive of Marks & Spencer, has one critical question for the world. 'Why is everyone so besotted with womenswear?' The 49-year-old boss of Britain's iconic high street store chain appears to be playing with fire. For millions of customers, womenswear is M&S. The style and the quality of every new range is the talk of the fashion pages and the financial performance of womenswear is the critical measure of the company's performance. - Mail on Sunday