Friday newspaper round-up: Brexit, Equifax, National Grid, Saudi Aramco
British and European business leaders are to demand an urgent breakthrough on Brexit from Theresa May in order to salvage a transition deal from the stalled negotiations in Brussels. The CBI and counterparts from France, Germany and Italy will meet the prime minister at Downing Street on Monday to warn that taking much longer to negotiate a transition agreement could render it useless because companies will soon be forced to assume the worst about the terms of Britain’s departure from the EU. – Guardian
Investigators have raided the offices of ticket resale companies StubHub and Viagogo as part of a probe into suspected breaches of consumer law in the “secondary ticketing” industry, the Guardian has learned. Officials from the Competition and Markets Authority seized information about the companies’ relationship with prominent ticket touts, who harvest tickets for in-demand events and sell them via the two sites. - Guardian
Equifax on Thursday reported a lower third-quarter profit as costs from the credit reporting bureau's recently disclosed data breach that exposed deeply sensitive information on 145.5 million people began to mount. Net income attributable to Equifax fell to $96.3m (£73m), or 79 cents per diluted share, from $132.8m, or $1.09 per diluted share, a year earlier. – Telegraph
National Grid is training the focus of its multi-billion pound investment effort on the US as political scrutiny in the UK mounts. The FTSE 100 operator of Britain’s pipes and wires is pouring more than half of its spending into projects in the North East of the US where regulators are encouraging billions of dollars in low carbon investments. – Telegraph
One of Britain’s most senior former civil servants has accused the government of pursuing a nakedly commercial foreign policy after $2 billion in loan guarantees were granted to Saudi Aramco, the oil group considering a shares listing in London. Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court, permanent secretary to the Treasury from 2005 to 2016, tweeted: “Her Majesty’s Government guaranteeing a loan to Aramco would be a further lurch in descent to mercantilism. Mr Gladstone will be turning in his grave.” – The Times
Britain’s economy will trail the eurozone for each of the coming three years as its growth falls to the bottom of the European Union’s 28 members, according to official forecasts from Brussels. The single currency bloc has not grown faster than the UK since 2011 but is now expected to outpace it until at least 2019, after the European Commission downgraded Britain and upgraded the eurozone in its latest outlook. – The Times