Wednesday newspaper round-up: EU, British Gas, Yahoo, Nationwide

David Cameron will launch a two-week political campaign on Wednesday to sell to sceptical Conservative MPs and wary European Union leaders the “new settlement” he hopes will persuade Britain to stay in the bloc. The prime minister argued that a draft deal to reform Britain’s EU relationship represented “significant change”, but the package will come under fire from Eurosceptic Tory MPs and the rightwing press. – Financial Times

Energy supplier British Gas is to make 500 staff redundant as it shuts its loft and cavity wall insulation business. The cuts form part of parent company Centrica's previously-announced plan to shed 6,000 jobs in an attempt to slash its costs and become more efficient. – Telegraph

Shops will be allowed to open for longer on Sundays after the Government revealed it was pressing ahead with controversial plans to give local councils powers to relax trading laws. A host of measures to shake-up shop opening hours will be put forward as amendments to the Enterprise Bill, Sajid Javid, the business secretary, announced today. It comes less than three months after David Cameron, the Prime Minister, was forced to scrap a vote on plans to relax trading laws after they sparked a revolt by 20 Conservative MPs. – Telegraph

Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer has announced plans to cut the company’s workforce by 15% and close five foreign offices by the end of 2016. The struggling tech company reported a $4.4bn loss for the last three months of 2015 as it wrote down the value of assets including Tumblr, the blogging site it bought for $1bn in 2013. – Guardian

Oil prices continue to be challenging in the near term,” says BP. You bet. The oil major fell to a record loss of $6.5bn (£4.5bn) last year, and that period included a final quarter in which the oil price averaged $44 (£30.50) a barrel. Brent now stands at $33 (£22.90) a barrel. How much pain can BP take before cutting its dividend? There’s no need to panic, says chief executive Bob Dudley, once again pledging a commitment to a dividend that currently offers a yield of 8% on a share price down 9% on Tuesday. Top marks for loyalty to those investors holding BP stock for income – which include many of our pension funds – but is this just a refusal to face financial facts? – Guardian

Collapsing confidence in the buy-to-let market will lead to half a million properties coming on to the housing market in the next year, a survey suggests. George Osborne’s crackdown on landlords has sent confidence in buy-to-let to a low point, the study found. The proportion of landlords hoping to sell in the next 12 months has more than doubled since July from 7 per cent to 19 per cent. – The Times

Top executives at Britain’s biggest building society were warned as early as 2007 that its involvement in selling financial instruments linked to interest rate hedging products risked dragging it into a mis-selling scandal. Nationwide, which has remained comparatively unscathed from the controversies resulting from the financial crisis, stopped selling cancellable swaps, a type of interest rate hedging product used to protect customers against moves in borrowing rates, in October 2007, according to documents seen by The Times. - The Times