Wednesday newspaper round-up: China, director pay, coal, ITV
China has said that Beijing and Washington will push forward with trade negotiations in the next 90 days and it is confident that an agreement can be reached but doubts remain over whether the two sides can resolve their deep differences. The commerce ministry, in a brief statement on its website, also said China would work to implement specific issues already agreed upon as quickly as possible. - Guardian
A powerful investor body has raised concerns with the heads of 32 leading listed companies for failing to address significant shareholder rebellions. The Investment Association has written to groups, including Astrazeneca, WPP and Berkeley Group, that have faced revolts on the same resolution for two years in a row. In more than half of the letters to the “repeat offenders”, the shareholder dissent at annual meetings related to concerns about excessive executive pay. - The Times
Britain's oldest coal-fired power plants prepared to fire up their hoppers for a price of almost £1,000 per megawatt-hour on Tuesday to avert a power shortfall as temperatures across the country plunge and wind power wanes. The cold snap ignited the winter’s first warning that Britain would run out of electricity unless idling coal plants ramp up to help meet demand for power. - Telegraph
ITV boss Carolyn McCall and GSK chief Emma Walmsley have been named Britain’s most admired leaders in a poll of top business executives. The duo, two of the just six women who lead FTSE 100 companies, came out on top in a survey of 234 board directors, analysts and City commentators as part of Management Today’s Britain’s Most Admired Companies survey. - Telegraph
Ray Kelvin, the founder and chief executive of Ted Baker, arrived for work at the retail chain’s London headquarters yesterday as more details emerged about his alleged workplace practices. More than 200 members of staff have made complaints, accusing him of forced hugging, making sexual innuendos and stroking people’s necks. - The Times
Anglian Water might not strike you as the most exciting company to work for in Britain, but its employees think differently. According to a new ranking of the 50 best places to work in the UK in 2019, it comes top. With a rating of 4.5 out of 5, the water company beat competition from the likes of Salesforce, Hiscox and Sky Betting and Gaming, which came in fifth, sixth and seventh place respectively. - Telegraph
Chinese companies such as the telecoms giant Huawei could spy on Western consumers thanks to their dominance of the technology behind the new 5G superfast mobile network, a US congressional commission has warned. Security experts believe that Beijing would be capable of ordering the companies to “modify products” either to fail on command or to snoop on users. - The Times
A “universal fingerprint” has been found in the DNA of common cancers that could one day enable a diagnosis to be made with a simple ten-minute blood test. Researchers from the University of Queensland in Australia demonstrated that there is a tell-tale pattern of gene expression in cancer genomes which is not found in healthy genomes, allowing them to spot cancer DNA circulating in the blood. - The Times