Monday newspaper round-up: British Steel, Viagogo, tariffs

(Sharecast News) - British Steel is to deploy emergency measures in a race against time to save the blast furnaces at Scunthorpe, as the business secretary refused to guarantee the plant could get what it needed in time. The company is understood to be looking at offers of help from more than a dozen businesses to obtain materials such as iron ore and coking coal, potentially allowing it to avoid the temporary shutdown of one of the two furnaces. - Guardian The ticket resale platform Viagogo has been accused of failing to prevent "misleading and potentially unlawful" practices on its platform, despite facing intense scrutiny as the government consults on new anti-touting laws. Ministers are weighing up plans to cap the price at which tickets can be resold, after Labour pledged in its election manifesto to tackle ticket touts using platforms such as Viagogo and StubHub to charge fans huge mark-ups for in-demand shows. - Guardian

Britain's biggest businesses are preparing to slash hiring and scale back investment plans to stave off the threat posed by Donald Trump's trade war. Plans are being drawn up for the deepest hiring cuts since 2020, according to Deloitte's quarterly survey of finance chiefs, which will see workers bear the brunt of aggressive savings. To cope with the impact of the US president's global tariffs, companies are set to water down planned pay rises to an average of 3pc, despite predicting that inflation will rise to 3.1pc over the course of next year. - Telegraph

The tariff regime for America's technology giants was plunged into more chaos as Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, backtracked on exemptions granted less than two days earlier. On Friday, President Trump's administration excluded smartphones, computers and other electronic products, mostly sourced from China, from the 145 per cent tariffs on the country and the baseline 10 per cent import duty on goods from most other nations. - The Times

Neil Woodford, the discredited asset manager, has defended his Guernsey listings tactic and his controversial asset swap gambit which raised eyebrows in the months leading up to the collapse of his £17 billion empire. The fund manager, who is fighting a regulatory finding of failings in running the main Woodford Equity Income fund, responded for the first time to public questioning on some of the questionable stratagems he adopted to try to save his empire as clients defected in droves in 2019. - The Times