Wednesday newspaper round-up: WeWork, energy bill payers, The Telegraph

(Sharecast News) - WeWork plans to file for bankruptcy as early as next week, a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, as the SoftBank Group-backed company struggles with a massive debt pile and hefty losses. - Guardian Bill payers could be on the hook for almost £6bn to cover the cost of bailing out suppliers that went bust during the energy crisis, according to the government's spending watchdog. The public accounts committee (PAC) has issued a "sobering reminder" that the government has no guarantee that it will be able to recover almost £3bn in costs for rescuing about 1.5m households affected by the collapse of Bulb Energy. - Guardian

Britain's middle classes are working closer to state pension age than any other cohort of society amid a surge in economic inactivity, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said. Workers in the squeezed middle are less likely to retire in their late 50s or early 60s than either the rich, who can afford it, or the poor, who are more likely to be out of work because of sickness or disability, a report by the think tank found. - Telegraph

Metro Bank, Starling, TSB and Monzo are the mainstream banks that received the highest rates of fraudulent payments last year, according to research that sheds light on which firms are being targeted by scammers. The Payment Systems Regulator yesterday released industry figures for so-called authorised push payment (APP) fraud, which is when a bank customer is conned into sending a payment to a fraudulent account they believe is legitimate. - The Times

The government is under pressure to intervene in the Barclay family's £1 billion Middle East-backed bid to regain control of the Telegraph group. Danny Kruger, the Conservative MP for Devizes, a former Daily Telegraph writer, wrote to Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, last week urging her to step in to ensure that the Barclays' deal is subject to "proper scrutiny". - The Times