Wednesday newspaper round-up: Telegraph, flexible working, Ford

The owner of Canary Wharf has had its credit rating cut deeper into “junk” territory over concerns about its debts as it struggles to attract workers back to the east London office hub after the pandemic. The credit rating agency Fitch has further downgraded Canary Wharf Group, the landlord of the development, in a reflection of risks over an upcoming bond refinancing. – Guardian

Older workers risk losing out to younger colleagues in Angela Rayner’s flexible working push, with younger staff dominating discussions with bosses over different patterns of work. Just 24pc of those aged over 55 have spoken to their managers about flexible working since the right to request different arrangements came into force in April, according to a survey from Phoenix Group. By contrast 54pc of those aged 18 to 34 have taken time with their bosses to discuss flexible working. – Telegraph

Ford has filed a patent for technology that can eavesdrop on drivers and passengers to serve them hyper-targeted advertising. The technology would allow the car’s infotainment system to listen to “conversations between occupants of the vehicles”, which its software could then filter for “keywords or phrases”. The system would learn what adverts “annoy or irritate” based on remarks “spoken by the user when ads are presented to them”, while it would be able to recognise the vehicle’s occupants based on in-car cameras or microphones and tailor its adverts to each person. – Telegraph

Caroline Ellison has urged a federal judge not to send her to jail after the former cryptocurrency executive helped prosecutors to win a jail sentence for her former boyfriend Sam Bankman-Fried. Ellison, 29, has pleaded guilty over her role in the multibillion-dollar collapse of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange. Customers of FTX and Alameda Research, its sister company where she was chief executive, were defrauded out of an estimated $8 billion. – The Times