The railways will again grind to a halt on Wednesday as workers strike over pay, job security and working conditions. The latest talks to avert the action failed last week, a month since three days of industrial action in June. The strikes involve more than 40,000 workers at Network Rail, 14 train companies, and members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT). – Guardian
Ministers and government officials played “fast and loose” when awarding £777m in Covid contracts to a healthcare firm that employed the Conservative MP Owen Paterson as a lobbyist, the head of parliament’s spending watchdog has said. In a damning report, the House of Commons public accounts committee (PAC) concluded that the government made a series of failures, making it impossible to know if the contracts had been awarded properly to Randox. – Guardian
Google has suffered its slowest quarterly sales growth in two years, in the latest sign of a global downturn for tech. Alphabet, the search engine giant’s parent company, posted a 12pc rise in quarterly revenue to $69.7bn (£57.96). The performance, while better than rivals, was its weakest growth in two years and profits fell 13.6pc to $16bn. – Telegraph
Credit Suisse is set to lose its second chief executive in three years as the bank continues to lurch from crisis to crisis. The Swiss bank is set to announce the departure of its chief executive Thomas Gottstein after two and a half years in the role, the Wall Street Journal reported. His expected departure comes as the historic European bank struggles to restore its reputation after a string of recent scandals. – Telegraph
Average pay for partners at Macfarlanes has risen by more than 19 per cent over the past year to an average of nearly £2.5 million. The law firm, renowned for advising extremely wealthy individuals, said that its revenue for 2020-21 had risen by 16.4 per cent to £303.7 million. That translated to a profit of £164.2 million, a rise of 15.4 per cent over the previous year. – The Times
