Tuesday newspaper round-up: Rail strikes, housebuilding, Vodafone

Hopes of a deal to avert severe Christmas rail disruption were dashed on Monday night when the RMT union announced additional strike dates and rebuffed a pay offer from Network Rail just before the industry’s deadline. The union said it would put the offer to members in an electronic referendum this week but recommend that they reject it. It affirmed that two 48-hour strikes that will stop much of the railway next week would go ahead either way. – Guardian

Rishi Sunak is to drop compulsory housebuilding targets to see off an embarrassing backbench rebellion, prompting criticism he is putting party unity over the national interest. The capitulation, which comes in the middle of a national housing crisis, will spark fresh concerns that the prime minister is too weak to take on unruly Conservative backbenchers. It followed up to 100 Tory MPs threatening to back an amendment that would in effect force the government to abolish the target of building 300,000 homes a year in England. – Guardian

Vodafone is under pressure from a billionaire French shareholder to accelerate cost-cutting and asset sales after the ousting of its chief executive. The FTSE 100 telecoms giant announced Nick Read’s exit following a nearly 50pc slump in its share price since he took charge four years ago. – Telegraph

The value of London office blocks is forecast to fall sharply over the next few years, with rents predicted to almost halve as rising unemployment and working from home depress demand, according to Citi, the investment bank. Aaron Guy, a real estate analyst at Citi, expects the values of office blocks in the capital to fall by 38 per cent in the next two to three years “driven primarily by likely recessionary impacts on higher unemployment and continued work-from-home office shrinkage”. – The Times

A bank criticised by a former minister for its allegedly poor due diligence work on a pandemic finance scheme has admitted to MPs that more than one in three of the state-backed loans it issued was “not performing”. Anne Boden, chief executive of Starling, the digital bank, told the public accounts committee that 34.3 per cent of the bounceback loans it provided were in “distressed” status — significantly higher than the average rate. – The Times