Tuesday newspaper round-up: Epic Games, Adobe, BAT

(Sharecast News) - Bank of England concerns over the high level of pay awards are likely to be eased in the coming months as wage settlements fall in response to a tumbling annual inflation rate, a thinktank has said. The Resolution Foundation said recent strong growth in earnings was primarily caused by a sharp increase in the cost of living, with workers trying to prevent their living standards being eroded. - Guardian Epic Games, maker of Fortnite, has prevailed in an antitrust trial over Alphabet's Google Play app marketplace, Epic's chief executive said on Monday, hours after the federal jury took up the case. "Victory over Google! After 4 weeks of detailed court testimony, the California jury found against the Google Play monopoly on all counts. The Court's work on remedies will start in January," Tim Sweeney wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. - Guardian

The world is edging towards a "new Cold War" that risks "annihilating" free trade as we know it, the deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned. Gita Gopinath said "growing fault lines" in the global economy, such as tensions between the US and China and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, had created permanent shifts in the way countries do business. - Telegraph

With a population of around 3,000, Fordham, Cambridgeshire, is not known to be a hotbed of organised crime. But for Jonathan James, who opened a new Fresh & Proper shop in the village with his son Joshua in June, it has become the site of an ongoing battle with shoplifting gangs. - Telegraph

The UK competition regulator is stifling innovation and entrepreneurship by taking too long to make decisions, according to a senior Adobe executive who is overseeing its $20 billion takeover of Figma. In an interview with The Times, David Wadhwani, president of Adobe's Digital Media business, said: "The process should not take 15 months to get to the stage. I think we can all agree that expediting these kinds of decisions is important for innovation and for doing the right thing by consumers and customers to make these decisions faster and move more quickly." - The Times

A secretive Cayman Islands-based tycoon, one of the largest shareholders in British American Tobacco, has raised his stake in the maker of Dunhill and Lucky Strike following a share sell-off in the cigarette company last week. Spring Mountain Investments, the vehicle of Kenneth Dart, a billionaire heir to an American foam cups fortune, has increased his position to 10 per cent from 9 per cent, new stock market filings show. - The Times