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Thursday newspaper round-up: Wiz, Port Talbot, John Lewis

(Sharecast News) - Cybersecurity firm Wiz, which last month rejected a $23bn (£18bn) takeover bid from Google's parent company, Alphabet, is to open a European headquarters in London - a move that is a major shot in the arm for the UK's aspiration to be a global tech hub. The new office, the company's first in Europe, will be run by co-founder and research and development head, Roy Reznik, who is relocating from Israel to the UK capital to underscore the company's business ambitions in the region. - Guardian Uncertainty over the future of Tata Steel in south Wales is already causing job losses in the broader industry, the Welsh secretary has warned, as the government scrambles to reduce the toll of redundancies in Port Talbot. Speaking on Wednesday ahead of announcing the first £13.5m tranche of funding to support laid-off workers, the secretary of state for Wales, Jo Stevens, criticised the former Conservative government for what she said was a failure to prepare for the possibility of thousands of jobs losses at Port Talbot. - Guardian

John Lewis is set to put storeroom workers on its shop floors in a race to improve customer service and win back sales. The company said it will no longer have separate backroom workers and shop floor staff in order to free up more employees to work on checkouts and serve customers in fitting rooms, for example. - Telegraph

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence start-up has unveiled a new chatbot which, it claims, matches the performance of rivals such as ChatGPT. xAI described the chatbot, Grok-2, as a "significant step forward" for the company and said that it was on a par with the AI models of Google, OpenAI and Anthropic. - The Times

The Treasury has insisted it remains in "positive discussions" with AstraZeneca over the pharmaceutical company's planned £450 million investment in a vaccine manufacturing facility in northwest England. Doubts over the investment have surfaced following a report that the Treasury has sought to cut the amount of state support for the project to £40 million, below the at least £65 million Jeremy Hunt, the former chancellor, is understood to have verbally offered AstraZeneca to expand its nasal flu vaccines plant in Speke. - The Times

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(Sharecast News) - Elon Musk escalated his feud with OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman on Monday. The billionaire is leading a consortium of investors that announced it had submitted a bid of $97.4bn for "all assets" of the artificial intelligence company to OpenAI's board of directors. The startup, which operates ChatGPT, has been working to restructure itself away from its original non-profit status. OpenAI also operates a for-profit subsidiary, and Musk's unsolicited offer could complicate the company's plans. The Wall Street Journal first reported the proposed bid. - Guardian
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(Sharecast News) - An increasingly complex tax system is burdening the government and businesses with hundreds of millions of pounds more in administration costs, Whitehall's spending watchdog has warned. The report by the National Audit Office (NAO) also said "poor levels of service" meant some taxpayers and their representatives were "finding it more difficult to deal with their tax matters and are losing trust in HM Revenue & Customs [HMRC]". - Guardian

Important information: This information is not a personal recommendation for any particular investment. If you are unsure about the suitability of an investment you should speak to one of Fidelity’s advisers or an authorised financial adviser of your choice. When you are thinking about investing in shares, it’s generally a good idea to consider holding them alongside other investments in a diversified portfolio of assets. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future returns.

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