Thursday newspaper round-up: Fired Earth, Nick Candy, Nvidia boss

(Sharecast News) - The firm linked to the former Conservative peer Michelle Mone that was found last month to have supplied unusable personal protective equipment during the pandemic owes £39m in unpaid taxes, according to company documents. PPE Medpro, owned by Mone's husband, the Isle of Man-based businessman Doug Barrowman, was put into administration on 30 September, the day before the high court judgment was made public. - Guardian The deaths from pollution caused by Europe's biggest plastic plant, which is being built in Antwerp, will outstrip the number of permanent jobs it will create, lawyers will argue in a court challenge issued on Thursday. In documents submitted to the court, research suggests the air pollution from Ineos's €4bn petrochemical plant would cause 410 deaths once operational, compared with the 300 permanent jobs the company says will be created. - Guardian

Sir Keir Starmer's former investment minister was accused of exaggerating her career by the late British billionaire Mike Lynch. Baroness Gustafsson, the former chief executive of Darktrace and protégé of Lynch, is claimed to have encouraged "misinformation" about her role at the cybersecurity company. In a letter sent by the tech tycoon before his death, he claimed Darktrace had sought to promote Lady Gustafsson as a co-founder while downplaying his own role in creating the business. - Telegraph

Upmarket tiles retailer Fired Earth has been forced to shut all of its high street stores after collapsing into administration. The group's 20 UK showrooms, in wealthy areas such as London's New Kings Road and Islington, have been closed and 133 employees made redundant following the appointment of administrators at Leonard Curtis on Wednesday. - Telegraph

Nick Candy, the property investor and Reform UK party treasurer, has won a bitter legal battle against the dotcom-era entrepreneur Robert Bonnier over a failed business deal. Bonnier, a Dutch businessman, was found by the High Court to have made fraudulent misrepresentations in order to induce Candy to back Aaqua, a social media start-up. - The Times

The boss of Nvidia, the near-$5 trillion chipmaker behind the artificial intelligence boom, sought to allay fears over the soaring valuations among big technology companies amid fresh warnings that "bubbles" are building up in global equity markets. Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive of Nvidia, told The Times: "We are all in a bubble, the question is where are you in that phase? I believe we're in the beginning of the build-out. It just happens to be with very large numbers." - The Times