Friday newspaper round-up: EU policy votes, US pharma, UK credit rating

Britain is pressing for an “emergency brake” to safeguard the economic interests of non-euro countries, according to European ministers and officials privately sounded out about London’s EU reform wishlist. The brake-clause is one of some half-a-dozen principles that Prime Minister David Cameron and George Osborne, chancellor, want in a protocol that enables the EU single market to coexist more easily with an integrated eurozone. – Financial Times

Express Scripts and CVS Caremark, two of the biggest forces in US healthcare, have stopped doing business with a pharmacy group controlled by Valeant, prompting a fresh sell-off in the struggling drugmaker’s shares. The so-called pharmacy benefits managers, or PBMs, who run prescription drugs programmes on behalf of US health insurers and employers, said they had terminated their contracts with Philidor, a pharmacy that dispenses Valeant’s drugs. – Financial Times

Britain’s credit rating could be slashed below Austria and Finland's if it leaves the European Union, Standard & Poor’s has warned.Moritz Kraemer, the agency’s chief sovereign rating officer, said Britain would be stripped of its top AAA rating with a one-notch downgrade if it voted to leave the bloc, and possibly double that if relations between Britain and Brussels soured. – Telegraph

Volkswagen must consider offering compensation to motorists whose VW vehicle has lost some of its resale value as a result of the diesel emissions scandal, the transport secretary has said. Speaking in the House of Commons, Patrick McLoughlin said the German company would have to address the impact of the scandal on secondhand VW diesel prices. VW has admitted that 1.2m cars and commercial vehicles in the UK have been fitted with the defeat devices that allowed them to cheat emissions tests. – Guardian

Construction of a £1.5bn windfarm off the Suffolk coast is to go ahead in November with the creation of nearly 800 jobs, after three new partners were found to back the project. The future of the Galloper windfarm was left in doubt last year when energy company SSE pulled out of the project, blaming the cost and the subsidy regime. The remaining partner, RWE Innogy, halted work. But RWE Innogy announced on Friday that Siemens Financial Services and the investment and financial services group Macquarie Capital, along with the UK government’s Green Investment Bank, had become joint 25% equity partners. - Guardian