Tuesday newspaper round-up: Jes Staley, Unilever, ONS

(Sharecast News) - Environmental campaigners will challenge the granting of a high-interest £3bn emergency loan to struggling Thames Water at an appeal on Tuesday, arguing the "eye-watering" costs for a short-term fix are not in the public interest. With protests planned outside the court of appeal, Charlie Maynard, a Liberal Democrat MP who represents the campaigners, will argue in a three-day hearing that the public and consumer interest is not served by the debt package, which comes with a bill of almost £1bn in interest payments and financial adviser fees. - Guardian The former Barclays chief executive Jes Staley has accused the UK's financial regulator of seeking to "destroy" his reputation built up over a 43-year career in banking and making "no attempt" to understand his relationship with child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Staley took the witness box for the first time on a Monday at the start of the second week of a high-profile legal challenge in London. It marked the first time the former UK banking boss has given any detailed public account of his experience with Epstein or the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) investigation. - Guardian

Unilever is hiring an army of influencers to help sell its products as its new chief executive claimed customers are "suspicious" about traditional advertising. The Marmite and mayonnaise maker has announced plans to spend heavily on social media stars in the coming years, in the hope of winning over shoppers on sites such as TikTok. - Telegraph

A leading campaigner against "controversial" weapons makers sits on the board of Britain's largest pensions scheme. Catherine Howarth - one of 14 board members at the National Employment Savings Trust (Nest) - is chief executive of campaign group ShareAction, which seeks to prevent investment in fossil fuels and some types of armaments. Ms Howarth is responsible for helping to set the "strategic direction" of Nest, a government-run scheme which manages the pensions of 13.5m people across Britain. - Telegraph

Problems with the UK's official labour market data grew so bad that the Office for National Statistics' deputy chief economist warned there was "little and falling merit" in retaining the agency's long-running labour force survey, internal emails show. Richard Heys warned colleagues in an October 2023 email that the sample size for one aspect of the survey had "collapsed to only five individuals" resulting in a data point moving by 30 per cent. - The Times