Wednesday newspaper round-up: Brexit, Apple, Tata, Hinkley Point

Britain will move outside the EU’s single market and instead join “Bosnia, Serbia, Albania and Ukraine” in a European free-trade zone if voters choose Brexit in June’s referendum, according to a vision outlined on Tuesday by Michael Gove. The pro-Brexit justice secretary for the first time confirmed that the Leave camp did not want Britain to remain part of the EU’s tariff-free bloc of 500m consumers in which British-based banks can trade under a “passport” scheme. He insisted the UK’s financial services sector would “thrive” in this new environment. – Financial Times

Apple said on Tuesday that it had rebuffed a Chinese government request to hand over the proprietary source code for its operating system. “We have been asked by the Chinese government and we refused,” Bruce Sewell, Apple’s general counsel, told members of the House energy and commerce committee, adding that the request came within the past two years. – Financial Times

Thousands of British steel jobs could be saved after managers at Tata’s UK steel unit stepped up ambitious plans to buy the business from its Indian parent. Bosses led by Stuart Wilkie, who heads Tata’s strip steel business in Britan, called in staff on Tuesday to brief them about a possible management buyout. – Telegraph

As was always inevitable, the EU referendum is shaping up to be a straight fight between the alleged economic costs of leaving and the politics of immigration; and as was always equally inevitable, it is the perceived threat to people’s pockets which is winning the argument. Yet in so doing, it is ripping the Tory Party apart, threatening a deeply unstable and divided administration when normal government resumes after June 23. You cannot go around accusing your cabinet colleagues, as well as two former Chancellors, of “economic illiteracy” - as George Osborne did on Monday - without lasting political damage. – Telegraph

Proposals by the UK government to stop collecting information showing how the wealthy pass on their assets from one generation to another have been condemned by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a leading tax and spending thinktank. The IFS said Britain was in danger of allowing a misleading picture to emerge of its richest families, the top 1% whose wealth is at least £1.4m including the value of their home, that underestimates their wealth. – Guardian

The French president, François Hollande, is expected to hold a meeting of government ministers at the Elysée palace on Wednesday to discuss whether or not the construction of the £18bn Hinkley Point nuclear power plant in Britain will go ahead. The French government is not yet expected to reach a final decision on the controversial plans for France’s state-controlled utility EDF to build two nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point. But the president and top ministers are expected to consider the various financing options for the project. – Guardian

One of the country’s oldest and largest landlords has called an end to the boom in high-end commercial and residential property in the UK, saying that it is planning for a correction in prices in “the near future”. Grosvenor Group, which manages £6.7 billion of property assets across the world for the Duke of Westminster, 64, Britain’s richest man, said it was “only a matter of time” before the market turns after years of double-digit growth. – The Times

There were signs last night of the toll that a long price war against America’s shale oil producers is taking on Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is raising $10 billion from a consortium of international banks as it moves to boost financial reserves that have been depleted by falling revenues from lower oil prices. – The Times