Tuesday newspaper round-up: Consumer spending, Nick Train, Sam Altman
Consumer spending growth is at its weakest in more than three years as higher council tax bills and the rising cost of broadband and mobile phones eat into household budgets, a report has said. The monthly snapshot of credit and debit card activity from Barclays found an improvement in consumer confidence as a result of falling inflation was not leading to a pickup in spending. – Guardian
Lawyers and HR experts expect an increase in employment tribunal cases as companies increasingly clamp down on working from home and staff become resentful that the flexibility they have enjoyed since the pandemic is being slowly rolled back. A number of companies are now advocating a full five-day return to the office, with others enforcing a minimum number of days in the workplace. Administrative staff at Boots, who previously worked in the office three days a week, will return to the office five days a week from September. Many US banks, such as Goldman Sachs, also expect senior staff to come in for the full week, and its chief executive, David Solomon, labelled remote working an “aberration”. – Guardian
Star fund manager Nick Train has paid himself an estimated £14m dividend despite apologising last month for a recent run of poor stock-picking. Accounts for Lindsell Train, the investment firm founded by Mr Train and Mike Lindsell, showed its founders shared a dividend pot worth £39m in the year to January. Mr Train and Mr Lindsell, with their spouses, each own around 36pc of the business. - Telegraph
The US owner of Channel 5 has agreed to a $8bn (£6.3bn) merger deal with a billionaire tech heir’s production company, signalling an end to a months-long takeover saga. Paramount, the TV and film studio formerly known as ViacomCBS, has reportedly agreed to the terms of a merger with Skydance, a company set up by David Ellison, whose father is the Silicon Valley mogul Larry Ellison. – Telegraph
London must not become a listings venue of “last resort” for companies with “dubious human rights records”, one of London’s leading fund managers has warned in a broadside against the City’s bid to host the $70 billion float of Shein. Peter Hugh Smith, chief executive of CCLA Investment Management, which oversees about £14 billion of assets and is an investor in Amazon, said reports that the Chinese fast fashion group was eyeing a float in the UK were “worrying”. – The Times
Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, has quietly built up a portfolio of personal investments valued at almost $3 billion in technology companies, some of which do business with his artificial intelligence firm. Altman, 39, has become one of Silicon Valley’s most prolific investors with holdings in more than 400 companies, including Airbnb, Stripe and Reddit, managed by his family office. The scale of his investment empire was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. - The Times