Tuesday newspaper round-up: Sterling, retail jobs, Barclays, Apple

Mounting fears that Britain will vote to leave the European Union this month have sent the cost of insurance against a collapse in the pound soaring. As the pound collapsed back towards $1.40, traders have been hedging themselves, with euro/sterling one-month implied volatility, a measure based on the cost of insurance options taken to protect investors against movement in the pound over the next month, surpassing levels seen in the financial crisis. - The Times

Job opportunities in the retail sector are expected to fall to their lowest level for five years as shop owners claw back the costs of the government’s new living wage. About a third of employers in the retail sector intend to restrict the number of new jobs as higher pay packets for the lowest-paid staff eat into profit levels and cut dividend payouts. - The Guardian

Barclays is the British bank most exposed to the referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, as its international operations will be hit the most by Brexit according to analysts. Joseph Dickerson at Jefferies notes that Barclays share price is highly correlated with moves in sterling, which explain 80% of the stock’s moves over the past 18 months. - Daily Telegraph

The move by Microsoft to merge its technology prowess and more than a billion users with LinkedIn’s community of 433 million members could trigger the start of a new wave of technology mergers and acquisitions. According to Dealogic, there have been deals worth just over $85bn already this year and more could be in the offing, not least because the share prices of some of the biggest technology companies have tanked, making them vulnerable to predators. - The Times

Apple is making a fresh attempt to court developers by opening up its Siri virtual assistant, its iMessage service and a wide range of other aspects of its iOS operating system to outside app makers for the first time. The changes, announced at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, see Apple trying to maintain the iPhone’s place in app makers’ priorities amid competing demands on their time from rival virtual assistants and messaging apps, which threaten to unseat the smartphone as the centre of the innovation. - Financial Times

Government plans to let councils keep all of their business rates must address problems with appeals and withdrawing essential grants before they can go ahead, the Communities and Local Government committee has said. Plans to reform the business rates system were unveiled at the 2015 Conservative Party Conference by George Osborne, who said that the move would devolve power for more than £26bn of revenue to local authorities. - Daily Telegraph

Households could be forced to pick up the tab for reimbursing customers left out of pocket if an energy supplier goes bust, under plans from Ofgem. The energy regulator has been reviewing procedures to cope with a supplier going out of business as an influx of new start-ups join the market offering cheap gas and electricity deals that some fear may prove to be unsustainable. - Daily Telegraph

Cities have a huge waste problem. Levels are expected to more than double over the next 20 years in low and middle income countries as the population increases towards an estimated 8.6 billion by 2030. - The Guardian

Shares in Ocado fell by another 8% on Monday as investors fret about the impact of Amazon Fresh. City sceptics of the online grocery distributor’s business model have long warned that Tesco or Amazon would knock it out of the game. - The Times