Friday newspaper round-up: Boeing, Amazon, Harland & Wolff
Striking Boeing workers will vote on an improved contract offer on Monday, which includes a 38% pay rise over four years and a bigger signing bonus, their union said on Thursday. More than 30,000 factory workers who produce Boeing’s strongest-selling 737 Max commercial jet and other planes have been on strike since 13 September and have rejected two earlier offers from Boeing. – Guardian
Amazon became the latest of the “magnificent seven” tech giants to report quarterly earnings on Thursday, with all eyes once again on cloud computing and any sign of a return on vast AI investments. Shares in the e-commerce giant rose in after-hours trading. The company reported revenue of $158.9bn against analyst expectations of $157.2bn, and earnings per share of $1.43, compared to $1.16 expected by Bloomberg analysts. – Guardian
Carmakers including Honda and BMW have temporarily halted sales to customers in recent days as the industry grapples with a motor finance scandal that lawyers have warned will be “bigger than PPI”. Honda last weekend ordered showrooms not to deliver vehicles bought via financing deals following a shock court ruling on commissions paid to car salesmen. – Telegraph
The fallout from the car loans scandal has widened after it emerged that Metro Bank had temporarily halted its asset finance lending to review the ramifications of a shock court ruling. Several lenders have frozen their motor finance operations in recent days, causing chaos in the car loans market, following a Court of Appeal judgment last Friday that set a much higher bar for the disclosure of commission arrangements between credit brokers and lenders than had been required by existing regulations. Lenders were found to be liable for brokers’ lack of transparency. – The Times
Harland & Wolff’s leading executive has failed to meet an administrator-imposed deadline to provide a statement of affairs at the troubled shipbuilder, which is now not expected to be able to repay creditors. Russell Downs, the group’s executive chairman, has asked administrators at Teneo to extend the deadline to November 5. – The Times