Sunday newspaper round-up: Brexit bets, airlines, CMA probes, Lloyds lock-up

The bosses of the UK's largest businesses have developed plans for a dramatic late intervention in the referendum debate to keep Britain in the EU. Scores of chief executives and chairmen from FTSE 100 companies and elsewhere have signed up to a letter arguing that the economy and the jobs market have a brighter future if Britain stays in, with the Sunday Times reporting a draft of the letter argues the “EU membership is good for business and good for British jobs”.

The European Central Bank’s “money-printing” programme faces a challenge this week, with Germany’s top court set to rule on the legality of its bond-buying plans. A negative verdict, the Sunday Times said, could send shockwaves through already jittery markets, given the powerful influence exerted on investors by the ECB’s unprecedented efforts to shore up Europe’s economy.

One of Norway’s top business leaders has warned Britain against voting to leave the EU and following her country to the fringes of Europe, the Mail on Sunday noted. Kristin Skogen Lund, director general of the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise, warned that her country – which joined the European Economic Area but not the full EU in 1994 – faced almost all the rules imposed by Brussels on full members, but had no say in how they were drawn up.

CMA brace

The Competition and Markets Authority's plans to share bank customers' data to improve competition and help switching between providers could also increase the risk of fraud and identity theft, Barclays and Lloyds have warned. If customers share their transaction history with other banks and with comparison websites to help shopping around for the best account deals is felt could endanger customers, the Sunday Telegraph said, as the data could fall into the hands of fraudsters.

The CMA is also investigating the energy sector but is felt unlikely to call for the UK's Big Six to be broken up when it publishes the results this week, though the Sunday Times said the regulator may make it easier for households to switch suppliers. The two-year probe is expected to focus on the creation of a database of “disengaged" customers who have been on a standard tariff for three or more years and are missing out on around £300 of savings a year.

The UK government is preparing contingency plans to guard against a North Sea bankruptcy crisis as the plight of embattled operator Enquest highlights issues with a key North Sea project. According to city sources, the Sunday Telegraph said, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) is mulling action to tackle the risk of insolvencies among struggling mid-cap players Enquest and Premier Oil which are wracked with debt following the oil market rout and now stand at the mercy of their lenders.

George Osborne will be forced to shelve a retail investor offer of Lloyds Banking Group shares if the UK votes to leave the EU, according to City sources cited by the Sunday Telegraph. The predicted disruption to financial markets following a vote for Brexit could cause investors to sell British assets and so put the kibosh on the chancellor’s hopes of offloading the government’s remaining 9% stake in the bank.

BHS section

Up to 16,000 members of the BHS pension could be bought out with a cash lump sum under Sir Philip Green’s plan to ‘sort out’ the collapsed retailer's deficit, the Mail on Sunday reported. Last week Green promised MPs he would fix the scheme, which has 20,000 members and a deficit of £571m, with part of the solution currently being worked on involving buying out members with small pensions.

Arcadia warned BHS’s pension trustees in 2009 that the retailer was “being stripped to the bone” and that it did not have the cash to plug a widening pension scheme deficit. The revelation, which has been unearthed in the minutes of meetings between BHS’s pension trustees and Arcadia, comes despite Sir Philip Green’s protestations last week that the pension trustees had been “asleep at the wheel”, reported the Sunday Telegraph.

Sir Philip Green refused requests from Dominic Chappell’s representatives to speak to the Pensions Regulator before he bought BHS for £1, according to a previously undisclosed email, the Sunday Times revealed. Keith Hinds, a partner at the accountancy firm Grant Thornton, which was advising the former bankrupt’s Retail Acquisitions consortium, wrote to 37 people involved in the deal with an update on March 6 last year. Hinds reported details of a conversation with his opposite number at Deloitte, which was advising Green.

Tesco results eyed

Tesco could report a second consecutive quarter of sales growth for the first time in more than five years, which the Sunday Times said would fuel hopes of a sustained fightback against discount rivals. Britain’s biggest grocer is set to announce a rise of 0.2% in like-for-like sales for the three months to the end of May, according to one of its house brokers, thanks to “good underlying momentum” as increasing customer purchases more than offset the introduction of 80 cheap products under its Farms Brands label.

Budget airlines are heading for a bumpy ride as lawyers plan a class action to win refunds for millions of passengers hit by the growing menace of hidden fees, the Mail on Sunday reported. Legal firm CaseHub is hoping to take Ryanair to court to win at least £315m over charges, following research from IdeaWorksCompany that found £26bn was creamed off in extras – for everything from luggage to a £3 glass of water – by 63 airlines in 2014.

UK initial public offers (IPOs) in the first half of the year have more than halved due to Brexit fears and the slowing economy. Funds raised by UK companies have fallen to $3.3bn so far this year, down from the $8bn-plus in each of the preceding two half-year periods, reported the Observer, citing data from Thomson Reuters.

Pension experts will have poured scorn on a plan to cut Tata steelworkers' future pensions to save the company, the Mail on Sunday revealed. The Government proposal to limit further rises in pensions at Tata to the CPI measure of inflation, rather than the usually higher RPI, has been criticised this weekend by the Institute of Actuaries, which said it set a dangerous precedent.

Not only have oil companies been crushed by the low oil prices but so has the network of companies that supports and supplies them, like Rolls-Royce's marine division, which in 2015 grabbed nearly 60% of its sales from the offshore oil industry. New products, such as autonomous and crew-free ships, and taking its expertise in highly technical ships into other marine segments are thought to be a key way to guarantee the future of the division, the Sunday Telegraph said.

Jaguar Land Rover is exploring plans to build a giant battery factory to power a new generation of electric cars. The Sunday Times' sources said the company, which wants to build 1m cars a year by the end of the decade, is weighing an investment of several hundred million pounds in the plant, though no decision has been made on whether to build it in Britain or overseas.

A group of London shipbrokers have clubbed together to challenge the Baltic Exchange over their role in the market as it tries to sell itself to the Singaporean financial giant SGX, the Sunday Telegraph said. Eleven brokers have formed Competitive Ship Brokers Limited to campaign for better terms for providing the daily data that forms its lucrative cargo indices including the Baltic Dry, which is used as a bellwether for global trade.

The government has handed out almost £30m to Shell and other companies for work on carbon capture and storage (CCS) despite scrapping their projects that could have played a role in beating climate change, the Observer said. The payments, revealed in a written parliamentary answer, come as the UK government is about to host the international Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum even though it has just mothballed a £1bn CCS research programme.