Sunday newspaper round-up: Inflation, MPC, Tesco, Rolls-Royce, Morrisons

At their meeting this week, the Bank of England's rate setters are expected to pause and take stock of the impact on the economy of its recent interest rate cut, while UK inflation is set to continue its modest rise figures are likely to show. While inflation is likely to be boosted by the week pound in coming months, the Sunday Times said the City expected a slight rise for August, while analysts are confident the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) will leave rates on hold but could ease further before the end of the year.

Economists also expect official figures this week to confirm UK employment is at a record high despite the Brexit vote, the Sunday Telegraph added, though rising inflation and weaker pay growth will underscore the challenges facing the economy. In a week dominated by major UK data, economists believe employment rose 180,000 in the three months to July.

Many uncertainties remain for Tesco after the Serious Fraud Office said on Friday that it would charge three former executives over an accounting scandal that has rocked the UK’s largest retailer. While a possible ensuing corporate prosecution could mean a fine for the company as large as 400% of any perceived gain, the Financial Times suggested the group looked likely to avoid corporate prosecution.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is set to shy away from capping the fees that asset managers charge investors, the Sunday Times revealed. After a sweeping review of Britain’s £6.6trn fund management industry it began last year, the City watchdog is said to believe that fee caps alone cannot prevent investors from paying over the odds.

Rolls-Royce has poached the boss of Britain’s £56bn high-speed rail project to help stop the slide at the aircraft engines giant but this had dealt a further blow to the planned High Speed 2 project as no successor has been lined up. Simon Kirby, the chief executive of(HS2) after roles at Network Rail and BAE Systems, has been appointed chief operating officer by Rolls, which is battling to recover from a succession of profit.

Tesco and Sainsbury are the only Big Four supermarkets to have submitted planning permissions for new shops this year, but almost all the applications the pair have made are for convenience stores, according to fresh figures compiled by Barbour ABI for The Sunday Telegraph. All but one of the 20 applications filed by the pair during 2016 are for convenience stores, though Aldi submitted 42 applications for all sizes of shop during the year, while Lidl has filed 54 – three times more than the 30 from the major supermarkets and upmarket rival Waitrose.

Morrisons is beefing up its relationship with Amazon by rolling out Amazon click-and-collect lockers across hundreds of stores in the hope of luring in more shoppers. The Sunday Telegraph said the news comes ahead of what are expected on Thursday to be the Bradford-based supermarket's best half-year sales performance in years as the grocer focuses its turnaround on a back-to-basics approach to its core supermarket business, simultaneously overhauling its online strategy through a renegotiated contract with Ocado and a new partnership with Amazon Fresh.

Standard Chartered is likely to remain under strict US regulatory supervision for several more years, according to the Sunday Times' sources. After 2012's agreement reached with American financial watchdogs after breaching trade sanctions with Iran, the FTSE-listed bank was placed under the strict supervision of an independent monitor, with a release from the so-called deferred prosecution agreement that had been scheduled next December.

Ministry of Defence chiefs are on high alert as industry sources said a succession of mishaps at aerospace group Cobham had stoked interest from US private equity giants and industry rivals, though Cobham’s woes could trigger another attempt to merge it with the UK engineer Meggitt. Several sources told the Sunday Times that defence officials would favour a domestic merger between Meggitt and Cobham rather than an American deal.

Crystal Amber, an activist investment company, is poised to intervene at Johnston Press with a meeting planned with chairman Ian Russell this week, potentially ramping up pressure on the struggling company the Sunday Telegraph said. It is understood that Crystal Amber, a top 10 investor in the debt-laden newspaper publisher, will wait until after the meeting before deciding whether it will start to agitate for change at the publisher, which recently purchased the i newspaper.

Britain must accept that major parts of its offshore wind farms will be manufactured abroad, Danish giant Dong Energy has said, figures obtained by the Sunday Telegraph revealed it will receive a significant share of more than £1.5bn a year in subsidies that are funded by levies on UK consumer energy bills. The Danish state-backed company has benefited more than any other developer from the UK’s push for offshore wind and is facing fresh calls to invest more of its multi-billion pound proceeds into a British supply chain.

With Theresa May due to decide this month whether to approve the scheme, doubts over the future of Hinkley Point nuclear station will increase this week when ministers launch a consultation on alternative technologies, which could revolutionise the energy market and undermine the case for the £18bn pet project of former PM David Cameron. The Sunday Times reported that Aurora Energy Research, an independent consultancy that provides data to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and regulator Ofgem, will this week predict that by 2030 as much as 8 gigawatts of battery storage will be installed in homes and factories in Britain.

Two bidders will submit their final offers on Monday to buy the Green Investment Bank, with the British government hoping to raise £2bn, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. A sole bid from Australia’s Macquarie for the lender, which finances green energy projects, is up against the UK-based Sustainable Development Capital consortium, backed by the Pension Protection Fund, the Japanese trading house Mitsui, General Electric and insurer John Hancock.

The new owner of Poundland may dramatically expand its clothing range or even swap some of the 700 stores with its own fashion chain Pep & Co, reported the Mail on Sunday. Andy Bond, the former Asda boss who leads Pepkor Europe, which won shareholder backing for its £610 million takeover of Poundland last week, said: "There are a number of areas we will look at – whether it is looking at how we could use each other’s ranges or exchanging properties."

Cornwall-based Strongbow Exploration is planning to bring tin mining back to the county and has summoned the spirit of hit TV show Poldark to connect with retail investors as it targets a London listing. Strongbow, which earlier this year bought the South Crofty tin mine out of administration, will look to join the junior Aim market in 2017 while keeping its present listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange, said the Sunday Telegraph.

Britain’s biggest landlord has sold almost half his property empire in the past year, declaring the era of successful amateur buy-to-let investors to be nearing its end. The Financial Times reported that Fergus Wilson and his wife Judith, both former maths teachers, have offloaded about 400 of their 900 houses in Kent, with most sold to overseas buyers and about 50 to tenants.

In his fight against United States’ claims that he placed spoof bets on the market, 'flash crash' trader Navinder Singh Sarao will take his appeal against extradition to the High Court next month. The FBI and US markets watchdogs have alleged Sarao made illusory trades over several years that were designed to nudge the market in his favour, which will see him appeal the UK justice system’s approval of his extradition in the High Court on 14 October, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

UK taxpayers subsidised cheap loans to a foreign metals company owned by multibillionaire Uzbek-born tycoon Alisher Usmanov while the British steel industry was fighting for survival. The Observer reported that accounts for UK Export Finance (UKEF), which lends money to companies planning to buy products from British exporters, show that it gave £82.8m in “buyer’s credit” to Lebedinsky GOK, which mines iron ore, a key element in steel production.