Monday newspaper round-up: Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Brexit, arms companies

A last-gasp rescue for Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest surviving bank, has been thrown into doubt after reformist prime minister Matteo Renzi decisively lost a referendum on constitutional reform on Sunday. MPS and advisers JPMorgan and Mediobanca will meet as early as Monday morning to decide whether to pull a plan to go ahead with a €5bn recapitalisation, according to people informed of the plan. – Financial Times

Britain’s Supreme Court will start to hear arguments in one of the most politicised cases for decades on Monday, to decide whether Theresa May has the right to trigger Brexit without a parliamentary vote. All 11 Supreme Court justices will hear the case, so that there can be no accusations that the court would have delivered a different decision if the panel had been constituted differently. – Financial Times

One of the key business groups in British corporate governance has urged the Government to stick to its guns on putting workers on company boards, despite the signal last week that it would row back from this plan. Theresa May is due to meet with business groups on Monday to discuss her proposals to make businesses answerable to the rest of society, which she announced during her leadership campaign over the summer. – Telegraph

Formula One is locked in a dispute with authorities in India over £41.1m ($51.4m) of unpaid Grand Prix fees dating back to 2012, according to company documents. The Indian Grand Prix only took place three times, from 2011 to 2013, and was held on a track near New Delhi. – Telegraph

Britain’s rapidly growing army of agency workers is as serious an issue as zero-hours contracts, with full-time agency staff earning hundreds of pounds a year less than employees doing the same jobs, according to a new report into the issue. The Resolution Foundation thinktank warns that agency staff are the new ‘secret agents’ in the UK labour market, as it begins an 18-month investigation into the whole area of agency work. – Guardian

Arms companies in the UK and elsewhere in western Europe bucked the downward trend in sales in much of the rest of the world by recording a 6.6% rise last year, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). UK companies listed in the top 100 arms companies were among those who reversed the trend, with sales up 2.8% in 2015. Arms sales by western European companies had dropped in 2013 and 2014. – Guardian

Thousands of restaurant businesses in Britain could go bust because the fall in sterling since the Brexit vote has sharply raised the cost of imported food and wine, an accountancy firm has warned. Moore Stephens says that 5,570 restaurant businesses have at least a 30% chance of insolvency in the next three years, due to inflationary pressures and stagnating disposable incomes. – Guardian

Theresa May is facing a cabinet split over plans to offer “cash for access” to the single market when Britain leaves the European Union. Boris Johnson yesterday appeared to reject a proposal by David Davis, the Brexit secretary, and Philip Hammond, the chancellor, for the government to pay into EU coffers in return for preferential terms for business. – The Times

A last-gasp rescue for Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest surviving bank, has been thrown into doubt after reformist prime minister Matteo Renzi decisively lost a referendum on constitutional reform on Sunday. MPS and advisers JPMorgan and Mediobanca will meet as early as Monday morning to decide whether to pull a plan to go ahead with a €5bn recapitalisation, according to people informed of the plan. – Financial Times

Britain’s Supreme Court will start to hear arguments in one of the most politicised cases for decades on Monday, to decide whether Theresa May has the right to trigger Brexit without a parliamentary vote. All 11 Supreme Court justices will hear the case, so that there can be no accusations that the court would have delivered a different decision if the panel had been constituted differently. – Financial Times

One of the key business groups in British corporate governance has urged the Government to stick to its guns on putting workers on company boards, despite the signal last week that it would row back from this plan. Theresa May is due to meet with business groups on Monday to discuss her proposals to make businesses answerable to the rest of society, which she announced during her leadership campaign over the summer. – Telegraph

Formula One is locked in a dispute with authorities in India over £41.1m ($51.4m) of unpaid Grand Prix fees dating back to 2012, according to company documents. The Indian Grand Prix only took place three times, from 2011 to 2013, and was held on a track near New Delhi. – Telegraph

Britain’s rapidly growing army of agency workers is as serious an issue as zero-hours contracts, with full-time agency staff earning hundreds of pounds a year less than employees doing the same jobs, according to a new report into the issue. The Resolution Foundation thinktank warns that agency staff are the new ‘secret agents’ in the UK labour market, as it begins an 18-month investigation into the whole area of agency work. – Guardian

Arms companies in the UK and elsewhere in western Europe bucked the downward trend in sales in much of the rest of the world by recording a 6.6% rise last year, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). UK companies listed in the top 100 arms companies were among those who reversed the trend, with sales up 2.8% in 2015. Arms sales by western European companies had dropped in 2013 and 2014. – Guardian

Thousands of restaurant businesses in Britain could go bust because the fall in sterling since the Brexit vote has sharply raised the cost of imported food and wine, an accountancy firm has warned. Moore Stephens says that 5,570 restaurant businesses have at least a 30% chance of insolvency in the next three years, due to inflationary pressures and stagnating disposable incomes. – Guardian

Theresa May is facing a cabinet split over plans to offer “cash for access” to the single market when Britain leaves the European Union. Boris Johnson yesterday appeared to reject a proposal by David Davis, the Brexit secretary, and Philip Hammond, the chancellor, for the government to pay into EU coffers in return for preferential terms for business. – The Times