Friday newspaper round-up: Fat Cats, Google, housebuilders, Alphabet

The bosses of the UK’s biggest companies are facing renewed scrutiny over excessive pay deals, after new figures showed top executives earned the average worker’s annual salary within the first three working days of 2019. Dubbed “Fat Cat Friday”, 4 January is the date by which the average CEO of a FTSE 100 company pockets the equivalent take-home pay of a typical full-time worker in the UK. – Guardian

Google moved €19.9bn ($22.7bn) through a Dutch shell company to Bermuda in 2017, as part of an arrangement that allows it to reduce its foreign tax bill, according to documents filed at the Dutch chamber of commerce. The amount channelled through Google Netherlands Holdings BV was about €4bn more than in 2016, the documents, filed on 21 December, showed. – Guardian

Housebuilders have been told to stop blaming the planning system for holding back the supply of new homes as new figures show councils are speeding through applications at their fastest rate in over a decade. Around 87pc of major applications for residential planning permission were processed within 13 weeks or an agreed time limit in the year to last summer, compared with a low-point of just 47pc five years earlier. – Telegraph

Apple's shock profit warning has dragged it further down the list of the most valuable companies, as Alphabet became the third company to leapfrog the iPhone maker in less than two months. Shares in Apple plunged by almost 10pc after markets opened in New York, putting its valuation at around $675bn (£536bn). It is now worth less than Microsoft, which has a market capitalisation at around $755bn, Amazon, worth $738bn, and Alphabet, $717bn. – Telegraph

Three former Credit Suisse bankers were arrested in London yesterday on charges that they took part in a $2 billion fraud scheme involving state-owned companies in Mozambique. Andrew Pearse, Surjan Singh and Detelina Subeva were charged in an indictment filed in a New York court with conspiring to violate American anti-bribery laws and to commit money laundering and securities fraud, according to John Marzulli, a spokesman for federal prosecutors in Brooklyn. They have been released on bail. – The Times

The boss of the ferry company given a £14 million no-deal Brexit contract ran a shipping business that collapsed with a large tax bill, The Times can reveal. Ben Sharp, Seaborne Freight’s chief executive, has a chequered business past, raising questions about the government’s vetting of the company, which has no ferries at present. – The Times