Friday newspaper round-up: Jaguar Land Rover, Greensill Capital, Alphawave, Foxtons, Irish border
Jaguar Land Rover has suspended production at two of its three car manufacturing sites as a worldwide shortage of computer chips forces the global automotive industry to slam on the brakes. Thousands of workers at the Halewood plant on Merseyside and the main Jaguar factory at Castle Bromwich in the West Midlands are to be stood down from Monday for an unknown amount of time. - The Times
David Cameron repeatedly pushed the Bank of England and the Treasury to risk up to £20bn in taxpayer cash to help Greensill Capital, just as the lender started to face “significant” financial pressure at the start of the pandemic. The UK’s central bank was urged to provide support to Greensill, including by setting up a fund that would buy loans made by the financial services company and its competitors, in a string of emails to senior officials. - Guardian
A cutting-edge microchip technology developer which aims to transform computing has picked London for a $4.5bn (£3.25bn) float that would make multimillionaires of dozens of its staff. Alphawave IP is planning to raise $500m from investors in one of the City’s biggest listings this year. Its team of 75 staff, including its three co-founders, will retain majority ownership of the company after it goes public. Their overall stakes are in line to be valued around $2.25bn. - Telegraph
Shareholders in Foxtons gave the London estate agent a bloody nose yesterday over its decision to award its chief executive almost £1 million in bonuses despite taking almost £7 million in government support. More than 39 per cent of investors who voted at its annual general meeting opposed its remuneration report, which awarded Nic Budden total pay of £1.6 million. Foxtons said it was “clear that a significant proportion of shareholders did not agree . . . on the basis that the company had benefited from government support”. - The Times
Dozens of former subpostmasters who were convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting because of the Post Office’s defective Horizon accounting system are expected to finally have their names cleared. Subpostmasters’ lives were “irreparably ruined”, as they lost their jobs, homes and marriages after they were prosecuted by the Post Office – which knew the Fujitsu-developed IT system had “faults and bugs from the earliest days of its operation”, the court of appeal heard last month. - Guardian
The Northern Ireland protocol is an “unexploded ordnance” for the level playing field that could force the UK to follow EU rules, a top Brexiteer lawyer has warned. James Webber, who advised the European Research Group of hardline pro-Brexit Tories, said the provisions of the as-yet unimplemented protocol were “genuinely extraordinary” in terms of what they meant for subsidy control. - Telegraph