Sunday newspaper round-up: Sainsbury's, Shell, M&S - and Brexit

The Competition & Markets Authority’s review of the proposed £14bn merger between Sainsbury’s and Asda was flawed and should not be used as a basis for blocking it, a group of economists has said. The CMA was too reliant on use of the so-called Guppi measure, which attempts to quantify the incentive for companies to raise prices, according to economists from the consultancy AlixPartners. - Sunday Times

Petrol stations have attacked a “cynical” pledge by Sainsbury’s boss Mike Coupe to cap fuel profits in his last-ditch effort to revive a £12bn merger with Asda. The Petrol Retailers Association (PRA), which represents 3,500 fuel outlets, said the proposal would “put thousands of independent petrol retailers out of business and decimate consumer choice across the UK, particularly in rural areas”. - Sunday Telegraph

Doorstep lender Provident Financial has bolstered its board and urged shareholders to reject the £1.3bn hostile takeover bid from smaller rival Non-Standard Finance, calling it “financially flawed”. Provident warned that the management of Non-Standard, led by John van Kuffeler — who ran Provident between 1991 to 2013 — had no experience of acquisitions of this size. - Sunday Times

Marks & Spencer is sizing up ambitious growth targets that could see the company double the amount of food it sells and propel it into the ranks of Britain's biggest supermarkets. The surge would capitalise on the firm's new home delivery deal with Ocado and its plan to offer a full range of food in more stores to attract additional family shoppers. - Mail on Sunday

BREXIT & POLITICS

Britain’s exports would shrink by as much as a fifth under a hard Brexit, according to the first comprehensive analysis of the government’s no-deal tariff plans. Sussex University’s UK Trade Policy Observatory also estimates that manufacturing and agriculture output would fall by up to 11% as those industries faced new barriers to trade and increased competition from overseas. - Sunday Times

A royal college has said that drug supplies are "very largely secured" for the possibility of a no-deal departure from the EU. In an update to doctors, Prof Russell Viner, the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said he had been "considerably reassured" by the Government's preparations for such an outcome. - Sunday Telegraph

Theresa May was at the mercy of a full-blown cabinet coup last night as senior ministers moved to oust the prime minister and replace her with her deputy, David Lidington. In a frantic series of private telephone calls, senior ministers agreed the prime minister must announce she is standing down, warning that she has become a toxic and “erratic” figure whose judgment has “gone haywire”. - Sunday Times

Cabinet ministers must “step up” to oust Theresa May in order to rescue Brexit and prevent Parliament taking control, senior Tories have warned. Nicky Morgan, the pro-EU former education secretary, said that members of the Cabinet must now tell Mrs May “it’s time to go”, while Steve Baker, a leading Brexiteer, said would-be leadership contenders around the top table must “act now” if they wanted to persuade MPs that they were “the great statesmen to take us forward”. - Sunday Telegraph

Theresa May could be ousted from No 10 within days after her Cabinet plotted to replace her with Michael Gove as a caretaker Prime Minister. A senior Downing Street source told The Mail on Sunday last night that even Mrs May’s Chief Whip, Julian Smith, had advised her to set out her departure plans, with Environment Secretary Mr Gove emerging as the ‘consensus choice’ to succeed her.

Theresa May has summoned leading Brexiteers to a meeting in Chequers as she fights off attempts to force her to stand down. However, efforts to force her to stand aside immediately had lost momentum this morning, as senior Tories from both sides of the Brexit divide condemned the plotters. - Sunday Times

...The prime minister’s few remaining allies were engaged on Saturday night in a desperate battle to shore up her position, warning MPs that forcing May out would “tip the country into a general election and tear the party apart”. Downing Street is also warning hardline Tories that parliament is so against a no-deal Brexit the government would be brought down before it could implement such an outcome. - Observer

Philip Hammond has admitted Theresa May’s Brexit deal may not be able to get through the Commons amid swirling speculation that the prime minister could be forced out within days in a cabinet revolt. Appearing on Sky News on Sunday, the chancellor said that Conservative colleagues were “very frustrated” and “desperate to find a way forward” following reports that he and other colleagues were plotting to force her out. - Observer

Politicians and civil servants are expecting a Chilcot-style inquiry into the Brexit negotiations after a week of blame and recriminations over the prime minister’s stalled deal. Although Theresa May put the blame for the escalating crisis on mutinous MPs when she addressed the nation on television on Wednesday night, ministers now fear there will be a formal investigation into the fiasco that has left the UK teetering on the brink of crashing out of the EU without a deal. - Sunday Times

Officials at the Department for Transport plotted to cover up warnings about the extra aircraft noise created by a third runway at Heathrow, a memo reveals. The six-page document — sent to Chris Grayling, the transport secretary — recommended blocking a plan to tell millions of households about the extra noise they could face from the airport’s £14bn expansion. - Sunday Times

Private companies will be banned by a Labour government from running services that deal with vulnerable people and their rights, under a far-reaching plan to restrict outsourcing. The party has drawn up the plan in response to what it describes as a series of “outsourcing disasters” involving services handed to private firms – from testing for sickness benefits to the operation of some NHS cancer services. - Observer

SHELL, BANKS, PENSIONS

The oil and gas giant Shell is poised to start selling gas and electricity to UK households under its own brand for the first time as it shifts towards the power industry. The Anglo-Dutch company changed the name of its energy supplier First Utility to Shell Energy Retail on Friday, Companies House filings reveal. - SunDay Times

“Unrealistic” growth targets have put Metro Bank at risk of losing £120m of funding as it scrambles to recover from a huge accounting error, analysts have warned. The money is the biggest grant from a £775m funding pot designed to boost competition in the market, which Metro won last month despite the discovery of the blunder over its loan book earlier in the year. - Sunday Times

TSB’s catastrophic tech meltdown came after the IT division of its Spanish owner breached its contracts with the challenger bank. Sabadell ordered its subsidiary Sabis to build and test new technology for TSB’s upgrade but Sabis suffered a “series of issues” and failed to deliver on crucial aspects of the contracts, according to a source close to TSB’s board. - Sunday Times

Phones retailer Dixons Carphone has sealed a landmark agreement with mobile network operators over contracts it had described as ‘unsustainable’. The deals had forced the Currys PC World and Carphone Warehouse group to meet strict sales targets to satisfy contracts signed with the telecoms giants years ago when sales were higher. - Mail on Sunday

A US fund that sits on the board of the fast-food giant behind Burger King is building a stake in Domino’s Pizza as the chain hopes to break the deadlock in a spat with franchisees. Representatives from Asteya Partners, whose co-founder Ali Hedayat is on the board of Restaurant Brands ­International (RBI), have met with Domino’s management to discuss the situation, The Sunday Telegraph can ­reveal.

Britain’s biggest bookmaker is preparing to replace its chairman but has denied the move was a result of investor pressure after executives sold millions of shares earlier this month. GVC Holdings, which owns Ladbrokes and Coral, has begun the hunt for Lee Feldman’s successor. - Sunday Telegraph

Angry shareholders and MPs have turned on FTSE 100 chief executives over their huge pension perks and use of accounting trickery to mask the size of payouts. State-owned Royal Bank of Scotland has been thrust into the spotlight following uproar over pensions at HSBC, Standard Chartered and Lloyds Banking Group over the past few weeks. - Sunday Times

Sir Philip Green is preparing for a bruising showdown over the fate of ­Arcadia’s giant pension schemes as the tycoon attempts to arrest the fortunes of his struggling fashion empire. The embattled billionaire faces the prospect of having to step up annual payments to the scheme, a move that would place added strain on the retailer’s diminishing profits and accelerate its decline. - Sunday Telegraph

Hopes are high for mixer drinks maker FeverTree ahead of annual results this week. Analysts expect sales to jump 39% to £236.3m and underlying earnings to rise 32% to £77.4m. - Sunday Times

Lloyd’s of London plans radical action to tackle its “laddish” culture ahead of potentially the biggest shake-up of the insurance market since the 1990s. The 333-year-old institution is to call an emergency meeting of senior brokers and underwriters to consider how to make it easier for workers to lodge complaints about sexual harassment and bullying, according to sources. - Sunday Times

Public accounts experts have raised the alarm over councils ploughing taxpayers’ money into commercial property, after new research revealed a three-fold surge in hotel investments by local authorities. Councils spent £93m buying hotels in 2018, up from £33m the previous year, according to Knight Frank, as they sought alternative sources of income following years of budget cuts. - Sunday Telegraph

A new breed of interest-only mortgage for older people is starting to take off. These deals could throw a lifeline to thousands of people who have an interest-only home loan that’s coming to an end, but don’t know how they are going to pay back what they owe. - Observer

With Britons increasingly turning to digital payments, consumers aged over 55 and those on low incomes “risk being left behind” by banks, according to new research. The findings come in the wake of a major report earlier this month that says more than 8 million UK adults would struggle to cope in a cashless society. - Observer

The environmental campaign group Greenpeace can be revealed as one of the financial backers in an escalating legal row in which EU judges have pulled the plug on more than £1bn in power plant subsidies. Greenpeace confirmed that it is now funding further legal action in the English courts that aims to force the Government to comply with the decision by the European Court of Justice. - Sunday Telegraph

On Monday at the 1,000-seat Steve Jobs Theatre in Apple’s $5bn space-age campus in Cupertino, California, the company’s chief executive, Tim Cook, will unveil his big plans to become a modern media mogul. Details of the plans are sketchy but it appears Apple will be launching a new platform for news publishers with paywalls – the Wall Street Journal is in, New York Times and Washington Post are not – and announcing a series of new TV deals and original programmes that will put it head to head with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and their rivals in streaming media as they fight it out to be the new kings of Hollywood. - Observer

Apple has quietly started recruiting lobbying experts to run campaigns for Hollywood awards such as the Oscars as it prepares to launch a rival to Netflix. The iPhone maker will tomorrow unveil its new streaming division, which has already signed exclusive production deals with Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey and Jennifer Aniston. - Sunday Times

Amazon would be forced to put human cashiers in its unmanned stores under a controversial proposal by San Francisco officials. One of the city’s supervisors, Vallie Brown, said Amazon Go stores, which use sophisticated machine vision technology to detect what shoppers take and charge their credit cards after they walk out, would be covered by a ban on stores that do not accept cash. - Sunday Times

Job interviews should be scrapped to prevent narcissists — who will go on to mistreat their staff — from being hired as managers, according to the author of a new book. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor of business psychology, believes that interviews encourage bosses to hire in their own image, rather than on merit. “They invite us to perpetuate our biases,” he said. “What you need is data-driven assessment: CVs, psychological tests and analysis of past performance.” - Sunday Times

It is a familiar adornment of both Mother’s Day and Easter gifts, and brings dustings of sparkle to everything from children’s craft projects to greetings cards and even flowers and pot plants. But campaigners are calling for a ban on glitter, branding it an environmental scourge that contains damaging microplastics. - Observer

The government’s fracking proposals would release the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as almost 300 million new cars, fatally undermining ministers’ obligation to tackle the escalating climate crisis, according to new research. Analysis by the Labour party shows that the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere if the government’s plans go ahead would be the same as the lifetime emissions of 286 million cars – or 29 new coal-fired power plants. - Observer