Thursday newspaper round-up: Ocado, Boohoo, pensions

The UK’s largest employers have warned the jobs market is cooling amid a slowdown in wage growth in July and a fall in vacancies, extending an almost two-year downturn in hiring demand for permanent staff. Figures from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and the accountancy firm KPMG showed a fall in permanent staff placements in July as large employers made more redundancies and hired fewer new starters. – Guardian

Ocado is testing offering everyday products such as pasta, rice and washing liquid in refillable packaging in a first by an online supermarket. The scheme will trial a reusable vessel that can take food or laundry products with no extra costs for customers. The first phase of the trial, starting this month, will include 2kg packs of basmati rice and 1kg of penne pasta, both under the Ocado Reuse brand. Phase 2 coming later this year, will add 3 litre containers of Ocado Reuse non-bio liquid detergent and Skies fabric conditioner. – Guardian

Fast fashion retailer Boohoo is seeking to offload its office in London’s Soho as it battles to shore up its balance sheet. The troubled retailer has been looking for offers of around £60m for its base in the capital, according to market sources, just three years after splashing £72m on the building. It is understood that any deal will include a sale-and-leaseback agreement in which Boohoo will occupy the premises at 10 Great Pulteney Street for up to five years. – Telegraph

The former boss of Credit Suisse has lost a blackmail case against an ex-housekeeper who had a nervous breakdown after working at his luxury villa. Tidjane Thiam accused the domestic worker of extortion when she demanded almost 600,000 Swiss francs (£547,000) in compensation for alleged abusive working conditions. However, a judge in Zurich rejected the claims, ruling that the former staff member had acted within her contractual rights. – Telegraph

Regulators are pushing ahead with reforms which they say will help millions of savers to get better value for money from their pension schemes, including a new scoring system to identify the best and worst performing plans. A reformed system would shift the emphasis from lowest cost to highest value for money, potentially enabling schemes to invest in higher-returning illiquid assets including private equity and infrastructure. – The Times

EY has become the first of the Big Four accounting firms to be fined for breaching the cap on fees it can earn from providing consulting services to an audit client. The Financial Reporting Council found that EY carried out twice as much consulting work than it was allowed to for Evraz, the Russian steelmaker backed by Roman Abramovich. – The Times