Wednesday newspaper round-up: Virgin Orbit, Tesla, Cazoo

(Sharecast News) - Virgin Orbit, the satellite launch company founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, will permanently cease operations, just months after a major mission failure. The California-based firm, which had already filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States in early April, has auctioned off its main assets, recovering just over $36m. That figure is barely 1% of the value the company reached in late 2021 on Wall Street, when it was valued at $3.5 billion. - Guardian Office workers in central London are spending on average 2.3 days a week in the workplace, according to a report that warns against a wholesale switch to working from home. The thinktank Centre for Cities carried out polling of office workers in the capital and found they were spending 59% of the time in their workplace compared with pre-Covid levels. - Guardian

Sadiq Khan should slash tube fares on Mondays and Fridays to entice more people back to the office, according to a leading think-tank. The Centre for Cities said the work from home "experiment" risked destroying London's status as Britain's growth engine and hurting younger workers. - Telegraph

Tesla will "strongly consider" building its next gigafactory in England, Elon Musk has said. Mr Musk said his electric car company was preparing to look for a location to build a new battery factory later this year and would assess England as an option. - Telegraph

Asked if he would take his online used car retailer public back in the autumn of 2020, Alex Chesterman was unresolved. "We'll think about it at some point in future," he replied, "but not for the time being." But plans accelerated. Cazoo listed in the United States just ten months later as part of a $7 billion blank-cheque merger, at the height of the boom around special purpose acquisition companies, or Spacs. - The Times