Sunday newspaper round-up: ARM, Ocado, UK unemployment

(Sharecast News) - SoftBank is set to sell ARM for more than £30bn to American tech giant Nvidia, as fears mount over the future of 3,000 domestic jobs at the Cambridge-based tech company. The Japanese conglomerate, founded and led by billionaire Masayoshi Son, could seal a deal to sell ARM, whose technology powers most of the world's smartphones, as early as this week, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the story. - Sunday Times
Ocado sales could exceed £2billion for the first time this year after customers flocked to order food from its new partner Marks & Spencer. Credit Suisse forecasts that the grocery delivery giant has increased sales by two thirds in the past three months to reach more than £600 million. It said this could surprise some in the City who had raised concerns about its ability to cope with high levels of demand. - Mail on Sunday

Tough new restrictions to halt the spread of coronavirus may push unemployment to levels not seen since current records began almost 50 years ago, experts have warned. Economists suggest that, by the end of the year, the jobless total could rise above the 3.28 million total that hit Britain in 1984 - the era of the miners' strike and inner-city riots. - Mail on Sunday

The UK justice secretary, Robert Buckland, has said he would resign if the law was "broken in a way that I find unacceptable", as Downing Street continued to come under pressure over planned legislation that would override parts of the Brexit withdrawal agreement. In a remarkable scene in the Commons last week that astonished Conservative backbenchers, the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, admitted the internal market bill "does break international law in a very specific and limited way". - Guardian

Car sales will not recover to pre-crisis levels until the middle of this decade, according to credit ratings giant Moody's. In a new report it said the 27 per cent drop in worldwide car sales in the first half of this year had 'bottomed out' and it expected a sharp rise in 2021. But it said the severity of the fall would mean that the pace of recovery towards peaks seen before the pandemic - when 95 million vehicles a year were sold globally - would be only moderate after that. - Mail on Sunday

Online fashion retailer Boohoo is circling New Look as the struggling high-street chain teeters on the brink. New Look has proposed a company voluntary arrangement (CVA), a form of insolvency that lets retailers cut rents and close stores. It is New Look's second CVA in 2½ years, and a crunch vote of creditors is set to take place on Tuesday. Landlords are resisting the plan, under which property owners would accept no rent for three years on 68 shops, and take rent linked to store sales on more than 400 others. A CVA requires the approval of 75% of creditors. - Sunday Times

Hydrogen is rapidly turning into the holy grail for environmentalists and big oil companies alike, because the only by-product of its combustion is water. The government is committed to the UK achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The report, by consultancy LucidCatalyst, claims that nuclear power could create hydrogen and "decarbonise aviation, shipping, cement and industry using ... proven technologies". For hydrogen to be affordable and clean, it says, the gas "must be generated from non-fossil sources, at a price which is competitive with cheap oil". - Sunday Times

Games Workshop's investors are being advised to vote against its chairman at the company's annual meeting on Wednesday. The main concern is the length of Nick Donaldson's tenure. He has been on the board for 18 years - far more than the nine years widely regarded as the point at which a non-executive director can no longer be regarded as "independent". The advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has also questioned whether Donaldson, who became chairman in 2017, has enough time for the role. ISS has advised shareholders to vote against his re-election. - Sunday Times