Thursday newspaper round-up: Corporate profiteering, Nationwide, THG

(Sharecast News) - Profiteering has played a significant role in boosting inflation during 2022, according to a report that calls for a global corporation tax to curb excess profits. Analysis of the financial accounts of many of the UK's biggest businesses found that profits far outpaced increases in costs, helping to push up inflation last year to levels not seen since the early 1980s. - Guardian Nationwide has told the 13,000 staff it had said would not be forced to return to the office when Covid lockdowns ended that they must start coming in from early next year for at least two days a week for most. During the coronavirus crisis the UK's biggest building society unveiled one of the most far-reaching flexible working policies, called "work anywhere", telling all staff who did not work in its branches that it was "putting our employees in control of where they work from". - Guardian

The world is in a new era of low growth and high interest rates, according to BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager. It warned that inflation will be far more volatile than it has been in recent years - and economies can no longer grow as quickly as they have in the past without stoking price rises. - Telegraph

A New York-listed mortgage trust managed by the private equity giant Blackstone is at risk of a cash crunch, the hedge fund Muddy Waters has said. Carson Block, chief executive of Muddy Waters, revealed on Wednesday that it had begun shorting the stock, saying souring commercial loans could trigger a "liquidity crisis". - Telegraph

THG's activist investor has stepped up its campaign by urging the company to confirm break-up plans. Kelso Group has written to the business's board calling for a stock market statement outlining proposals for a demerger of its three divisions. THG operates a beauty business, a nutrition business, and an e-commerce services platform, Ingenuity. The company first listed on the stock exchange in September 2020 with a valuation of about £5 billion, but its share price has since declined and the company is now worth around £1 billion. - The Times