Wednesday newspaper round-up: Turkey/Syria, housebuilders, pensions, Woodford

The US publicly called on Turkey to do more to close its border with Syria, which has been a major conduit for Isis to bring fighters and arms into the country. As the US announced it would send more special operations forces into Iraq and Syria to take on Isis, President Barack Obama said on Tuesday he had had “repeated conversations” with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, urging him to block off the border to Isis. – Financial Times

JPMorgan Chase is tying up with OnDeck Capital, one of the biggest of the specialist online lenders, in a blurring of the boundaries between the old and new worlds of finance. A succession of specialist marketplace lenders has emerged in the US in recent years, most of them combining simple and speedy online loan applications with virtual platforms to package and sell assets to yield-hungry investors. The growth has been so strong — perhaps $7.5bn of originations this year, in the case of Lending Club, the largest listed online lender — that some brick-and-mortar lenders have been forced to engage with the upstarts, signing deals to buy assets or share technology. – Financial Times

England’s housebuilders will not be able to build the homes the country needs, even by 2020, a former Bank of England policymaker has warned. Speaking before a House of Lords committee, Dame Kate Barker said that the country needed around 300,000 new homes a year, but admitted the industry would not have the capacity for years to come. – Telegraph

Almost 70pc of shoppers plan to visit Aldi or Lidl for cheaper Christmas groceries this year in a further sign of the unstoppable rise of the discounters. Around seven in 10 shoppers have said that they would visit the budget supermarkets in the weeks leading up to 25 December for part of their Christmas food shop, according to figures by grocery think tank IGD. – Telegraph

Workers in the UK will have the worst pensions of any major economy and the oldest official retirement age of any country, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The typical British worker can look forward to a pension worth only 38% of their salary, once state and private pensions are combined. The Paris-based thinktanksaid on Tuesday that this compares with above 90% in the Netherlands and Austria and 80% in Spain and Italy. – Guardian

Swadlincote, a market town in south Derbyshire, has won £1m from Sainsbury’s to invest in finding ways to halve household food waste. The supermarket will work with community groups and the local council next year to test ideas such as growing mushrooms in used coffee grounds, using artificial “noses” that detect whether food is safe to eat and introducing community cook-ups to find new ways of using unwanted food. – Guardian

Neil Woodford’s fund has suffered losses of $55 million — far greater than previously thought — in backing a cancer treatment company that is being sued by shareholders and has been accused of financial impropriety. The fund manager, known for his track record and passion for the biotech sector, has invested about $180 million building a 28 per cent stake in Northwest Biotherapeutics. – The Times

The new boss of Barclays has become the first chief executive of a British bank to have a decade-long “claw-back” clause written into his contract as lenders are forced to toughen the rules allowing them to reclaim bonuses from senior managers even if the problems emerge long after an award has been made. – The Times