Friday newspaper round-up: Essar Energy, M&S, Intertek

(Sharecast News) - Days after the first wave of Russian tanks surged over the border into Ukraine in March 2022, dockers at a port in northern England took a stand. Appalled by Vladimir Putin's brutality, workers at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire vowed never to unload any Russian oil destined for the nearby Stanlow refinery, a major hub for UK fuel supplies. As the spotlight fell on Essar, the Indian-owned conglomerate that is Stanlow's parent company, it also acted fast, ceasing all imports of Russian fuel. - Guardian Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on the UK if it does not drop its digital services tax on US social media firms. The digital services tax, introduced in 2020, imposes a 2% levy on the revenues of several major US tech companies. Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office on Thursday, the US president said: "We've been looking at it and we can meet that very easily by just putting a big tariff on the UK, so they better be careful. - Guardian

Hundreds of offices across Britain risk closure as a result of Rachel Reeves's stealth "tax grab" on the sector, property experts have warned. Shared office landlords are facing backdated tax bills of as much as £1.5bn from Labour's changes to how business rates are assessed, raising fears it could prove "terminal" for some firms. Landlords have already been told to brace for extra tax charges of £594m a year from the shake-up, which changes how HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) classes shared office buildings, switching from a single establishment to separate units. - Telegraph

The chairman of Marks & Spencer claims self-checkouts are fuelling a rise in shoplifting among "good, honest people". Archie Norman told The Telegraph that a boom in self-service checkouts at supermarkets had broken the "human link" between shoppers and retailers. He said: "When normally good, honest people come in and they're buying their shopping and it doesn't scan, and there's nobody manning the checkouts, they're saying: 'It's not my fault and I don't have much time so if I can't get my strawberries through, I'll just put them in my basket'." - Telegraph

Matt Peltz, the son of billionaire activist investor Nelson Peltz, has built a multimillion-pound stake in the FTSE 100 testing and assurance company Intertek. A public filing released this week showed that Peltz has built a stake worth about £88 million in the company with his new fund Lost Coast Collective, accounting for over 1 per cent of Intertek's share capital. - The Times