Friday newspaper round-up: Virgin Media, House of Fraser, Twitter, TSB
More than 1,500 jobs are at risk after Virgin Media announced plans to shut a Swansea call centre, and as the company behind the fashion brands Jacques Vert and Windsmoor teeters on the edge of collapse. More than 1,000 jobs are on the line at Calvetron. Administrators are expected to be formally appointed at the parent group, Calvetron Style Holdings, on Friday for what will be the second time in a year. – Guardian
House of Fraser’s rescue restructuring faces a significant hurdle after it emerged that the department store chain may have to fund a multimillion-pound injection into its pension scheme. The ailing retailer could be required to set aside a significant sum in order to secure the support of the pension protection fund (PPF), an industry-backed body that bails out troubled schemes. - Guardian
The precipitous decline in car sales seems to have been arrested with a 10pc rise in new car registrations in April - but the industry is warning that it is an anomaly. Early figures on sales of new cars during the month posted a big rise after 12 successive months of decline. According to provisional data collated by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), 168,000 new cars were registered in April, compared with 152,000 in the same month last year. - Telegraph
Twitter has urged all users to change their passwords after it discovered a bug which had exposed some of them on an internal system, putting those passwords at risk. The Silicon Valley company usually stores passwords on its system after "hashing", or encrypting, them, meaning they cannot be read but it can validate users' account credentials. – Telegraph
Customers of TSB are likely to face months of disruption before the bank is able to fully fix the computer problems that have left many unable to access their accounts and struggling to perform basic services such as paying in cheques, financial regulators believe. In a highly unusual move, a team from the Financial Conduct Authority has set up a temporary operation in TSB’s head office to monitor the bank’s efforts to restore its systems. One source with knowledge of the work said officials were working on the basis that fully repairing the problems could take several months. – The Times
American prosecutors have charged Volkswagen’s former chief executive with conspiring to mislead customers and regulators about the carmaker’s diesel emissions cheating. Martin Winterkorn was indicted on four counts of conspiracy and wire fraud, becoming the most senior VW executive to be charged in connection with the scandal. About 11 million Volkswagen vehicles, including half a million in America, were secretly and deliberately equipped with “defeat devices” that allowed them to cheat diesel emissions tests. Volkswagen admitted the existence of the devices in 2015 during an investigation by the US environment watchdog and Mr Winterkorn resigned soon after. – The Times