Monday newspaper round-up: BMW, shop prices, Waitrose, Bernanke

BMW will unveil a significant investment in its electric Mini plant in Oxford on Monday, a move that will secure 4,000 jobs and strengthen the UK’s electric vehicle supply chain. The investment by the German carmaker is the result of “extensive” engagement with the UK government, according to the business and trade department, and marks a reversal of plans to move electric Mini production abroad to China. – Guardian

The largest solar farm in Europe to be built on a closed landfill site has begun generating renewable electricity from a former rubbish dump in Essex. The Ockendon solar farm, the third largest in the UK, includes more than 100,000 solar modules covering 70 hectares (173 acres) of land. – Guardian

Rising taxes risk “severely undermining” the fight against inflation, a group of more than 40 major British businesses have warned the Chancellor. In a letter to Jeremy Hunt, the bosses of Tesco, Aldi, Ikea, Greggs, M&S and dozens more retailers have warned an anticipated rise in business rates will ramp up costs and make it harder to cut prices. – Telegraph

Waitrose has cut the price of roast dinner staples and other items in the grocer’s latest bid to retain cash-strapped customers. The supermarket chain said it was lowering the cost of 250 items from Wednesday as part of an ongoing £100m investment. Among the goods falling in price are higher-welfare, medium whole chickens, which will drop from £4.90 each to £4.50 each. – Telegraph

When experts at the Bank of England begin their next round of forecasting for the nation’s economy, they will be watched closely by an outside observer. Ben Bernanke, the Nobel prizewinning economist and former US Federal Reserve chairman, has been charged with leading an independent review of the Bank’s forecasting models. He is the latest in a series of American economists to have been drafted in by the Bank to provide an independent evaluation of its work since it gained its independence from the Treasury in 1997. Before Bernanke, Don Kohn, David Stockton and Kevin Warsh were Fed officials to have written reviews of the UK’s monetary policy framework. – The Times

A “perfect storm” in the jobs market risks generating a “wage-price spiral” that would make inflation tougher to bring down, a report has warned. Resilient demand for workers, despite the economy slowing, is said to have strengthened employees’ confidence over pay rises. In research by Robert Half, a recruitment agency, and the Centre for Economics and Business Research consultancy, faith in future pay awards pushed its jobs confidence index into positive territory for the first time in more than a year. – The Times