Friday newspaper round-up: Meta, business taxes, PwC

(Sharecast News) - Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has said in a filing that it is increasing its spend on the personal security of chief executive and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg by $4m (£3.3m) to $14m, at a moment when the company has cut thousands of jobs in what Zuckerberg has called the "year of efficiency". Meta's board declared that the 40% increase was "appropriate and necessary under the circumstances" and was in place "to address safety concerns due to specific threats to his safety arising directly as a result of his position as Meta's founder, chairman, and CEO". - Guardian Jeremy Hunt should cut business taxes at next month's budget to boost the economy, George Osborne has suggested. The former chancellor warned that the historically high burden on industry risked putting companies off investing in Britain. He referenced pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, which has decided to build its new vaccine factory in Ireland because of the UK's high levies. - Telegraph

Lenders have been told by the City minister that they could sue the Bank of England over tough new financial rules amid fears that Threadneedle Street's regulations are putting the City at risk. Andrew Griffith suggested that finance executives could take legal action against the Bank over reforms to so-called Basel rules, which risk forcing British lenders to hold back billions of pounds more in cash than their rivals in the European Union. - Telegraph

The head of Rolls-Royce's passenger jet engine manufacturing division, the British engineer's largest and most important business unit, has been removed from his post as the new chief executive begins to make his mark on the company. In the first shake-up of existing management since he arrived as chief executive at the turn of the year, Tufan Erginbilgic has told senior executives that Chris Cholerton, president of Rolls-Royce's civil aerospace arm, is to step aside to other duties and that a search for his replacement has begun. - The Times

The UK accounting regulator has opened an investigation into PwC's audits of Intu Properties, the collapsed shopping centres owner, bringing the number of regulatory inquiries into the Big Four firm to five. Specifically, the Financial Reporting Council is looking at Intu's 2017 and 2018 audits. Apart from confirming that the decision to launch its inquiry was made at the end of last month, the watchdog gave no further information. - The Times