Tuesday newspaper round-up: BHS pensions, housing costs, small businesses

The UK pensions regulator is investigating events around the collapse of BHS after the retail chain fell into administration after 88 years on the high street, putting 11,000 jobs at risk. After the UK’s biggest retail failure since Woolworths folded in 2008, the regulator confirmed it was carrying out a probe of whether Sir Philip Green, the former owner of the BHS, should be forced to inject more funds into the retailer’s pension scheme to plug a half a billion pound deficit. – Financial Times

Rising housing costs have had the same effect on disposable income as adding 10 pence to the basic rate of income tax, according to new analysis by a think-tank. The finding will add fuel to the debate about the toll high house prices and rents are taking on younger generations. – Financial Times

Britain’s small businesses are losing more than £9bn a year to fraudsters who send false invoices, viruses posing as bills, or who pose as suppliers on the phone, it has emerged. Of more than 1,000 small-to-medium sized businesses (SMEs) surveyed by invoice network Tungsten, almost half had received a suspicious invoice or been a victim of invoice fraud in the last 12 months. – Telegraph

It is always hard to say what trophy gives you the best bragging rights in Silicon Valley right now. Your own space rocket, like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’s or Tesla’s Elon Musk. An office that makes the Starship Enterprise look cheap by comparison, like Apple, or extravagant staff benefits such free gender re-assignment, as Facebook and Netflix now provide. They all make you look rich and important. But increasingly it looks like it might be something else entirely that makes you king of the hill – a long legal battle with the European Union. - Telegraph

Waiting staff at the pizza chain Zizzi have had the amount they earn from tips cut, and workers will have their choice of free meals limited in changes the firm insisted were not related to the government’s “national living wage”. – Guardian

The government’s data protection regulator has issued fines totalling more than £2m since the law was changed 12 months ago to make it easier to crack down on nuisance marketing and phone calls. The penalties levied by the Information Commissioner’s Office on companies found to be breaking the law are more than four times higher than the £360,000 handed out during the previous 12 months. The law was changed last April. – Guardian

From Kirkwall in Orkney to Swaffham in Norfolk, and from Chippenham in Wiltshire to Bangor in Gwynedd, the scars are still raw. The financial crisis may have sent shudders through the banking industry and around the world, but on the high streets of Britain’s peaceful, placid market towns, the shock paled into insignificance compared with the demise of Woolworths. It’s a shock, moreover, that is still being felt, long after the closure of more than 800 shops and the loss of 27,000 jobs. Famed for its pick’n’mix sweets, Ladybird children’s clothing, toys and value ranges, many of its employees had worked for the group for most of their lives. – The Times