Sunday newspaper round-up: Asda, Barclays, McLaren

Zuber Issa, one of the two billionaire brothers at the helm of Asda, has been sounding out potential buyers for his 22.5% stake in the grocer. Instead, Zuber wishes to focus on EG Group, their petrol station empire. Meanwhile, Asda's next phase may include a bid for Boots. According to City sources, it was also possible that Zuber might use the funds raised through a sale to fund the purchase of his brother's stake in EG Group. - The Sunday Telegraph

Barclays is the High Street lender that is planning to close the most branches in 2024, 68 out of 312, and a further six in 2025. That will mean that over the past decade it had closed 83% of its branches. An analysis of figures from Which? by The Mail on Sunday shows that over 60% of the 10,000 bank branches that were open in 2015 will have been shut by the end of 2024. For its part, Lloyds was planning to close 56 branches this year, Halifax some 42 and NatWest 21. - The Financial Mail on Sunday

Mumtalakat, Bahrain's sovereign wealth fund, last week invested £30m into McLaren to support the development of new products. That sum was on top of the £80m that it injected into the supercar-maker two months before. Over the past year investors have put £500m into the company. However, McLaren has taken on financial advisers from Teneo to work out how to avoid having to rely on top-ups from Mumtalakat. - The Sunday Times

America's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration pushed Tesla on Friday into a recall of almost all of the 2.2m vehicles that it has sold in the US as some warning lights on the instrument panel are too small. However, for owners that will likely just entail software patch downloads at home. The same agency also upgraded its 2023 investigation into steering problems with Teslas to an engineering analysis, marking a move closer to a recall. - Guardian