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Friday newspaper round-up: NHS, House prices, Energy supply, Google

By Alexander Bueso

Date: Friday 26 Aug 2016

Friday newspaper round-up: NHS, House prices, Energy supply, Google

(ShareCast News) - NHS bosses throughout England are quietly drawing up plans for hospital closures, cutbacks and radical changes to the way healthcare is delivered in an attempt to meet spiralling demand and plug the hole in their finances, an investigation by the Guardian and campaign group 38 Degrees has revealed. Without the changes, the NHS at local level could be facing a financial shortfall of about £20bn by 2020-21 if no action is taken, the research suggests. -The Guardian


A shift in house price momentum is underway in the UK, as southern cities start to slow down with the north taking their place at the top of the leaderboard. Glasgow has emerged as the city with the fastest growing quarterly house prices, according to Hometrack's monitor of the biggest 20 cities in the country. Prices there rose 5.2pc in the three months to July. - The Daily Telegraph

The UK's burgeoning independent energy supply market is braced for a heavy hit as rocketing market prices make it harder for the smaller companies to compete against larger energy rivals. This summer energy markets have shown their steepest climbs in half a decade, which is already putting pressure on smaller companies to raise their prices while big six suppliers are able to delay price hikes, which are often responsible for an exodus of customers. - The Daily Telegraph

The US has been accused of "behaving like a tax haven", in an escalating war of words between Washington and Brussels over the European commission's anti-trust cases against Apple, Amazon and Starbucks. On Wednesday, the US Treasury threatened retaliation if Europe continues its tax crusade against American multinationals. - The Guardian

Margrethe Vestager, Europe's top anti-trust regulator, is expected to conclude her state aid investigation into Apple as early as next month. If her ruling goes against the Californian tech group, it could be ordered to hand over as much as $19bn (£14.4bn) in unpaid taxes to the Irish government. - The Guardian

One of the City's most influential investor groups, whose members manage £14 trillion of assets, has called on Sports Direct to reform fundamentally its corporate governance as shareholder pressure mounts on Mike Ashley's sportswear group. The Investor Forum, whose 40 institutional members own about 42 per cent of the FTSE All-Share index, said that it had been forced to make public its concerns after exhausting all the usual options to engage privately with the retailer's board. - The Times

European news publishers will be able to raise fees on internet platforms such as Google if search engines show selections of their stories, under radical copyright reforms being finalised by the European Commission. The proposals, to be published next month, are aimed at diminishing the power of big online operators, whose market share in areas such as search leads to unbalanced commercial negotiations between the search engine and content creators, according to commission officials. - The Times

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