Monday newspaper round-up: Harland & Wolff, Post Office, top rate taxpayers

Spanish shipbuilding firm Navantia is in exclusive negotiations to buy Harland & Wolff, the owner of the Belfast shipyard that built the Titanic, in a deal that could rescue up to 1,000 jobs. It is understood the group could take control of the group’s four yards – in Belfast; Appledore, Devon; Arnish on the Isle of Lewis; and Methil, Fife – as early as next month. – Guardian

The Post Office has recently explored resuming the practice of taking branch owner-operators to court, as mounting losses from shortfalls in its network of 11,500 outlets hit £12m a year. During the Horizon IT scandal more than 900 operators were wrongly prosecuted over discrepancies caused by the faulty accounting software, many of them brought privately by the Post Office, a practice it stopped in 2015 and has promised not to restart. – Guardian

Top rate taxpayers now pay more than two fifths of all income tax, according to official data that lays bare how reliant Britain is on just 1m workers. Taxpayers subject to the 45p rate are expected to contribute £124bn to the Treasury’s coffers this year, according to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) data. This is more than is raised from corporation tax, as well as the amount that the Treasury receives annually from fuel duties, council tax and business rates combined. – Telegraph

Red tape brought in by regulators after the financial crisis to protect consumers has gone too far and is poorly targeted, a bank boss has warned. The chief executive of Saxo UK said the growing regulatory burden on banks since the crash has come with “significant costs” that harm competition. Andrew Bresler, who heads up the UK subsidiary of Danish-headquartered Saxo Bank, said: “If I think about how many people pre-financial crisis versus post-financial crisis I would need, there are probably 30pc to 40pc more people to meet the regulatory requirements. That’s a lot more people than beforehand. – Telegraph

The UK’s largest private pension fund has pushed back on government proposals to require more investment in domestic assets, amid concerns that the policy could disadvantage pensioners. The Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) has warned the Treasury that forcing schemes to increase allocations forUK assets would be “wholly inconsistent” with trustees’ duties to provide the best outcomes for pension savers. – The Times