Wednesday newspaper round-up: Tesla, Covid payouts, Rolls-Royce

(Sharecast News) - JPMorgan has sued Tesla for $162.2m, accusing Elon Musk's electric car company of "flagrantly" breaching a 2014 contract relating to stock trading options that Tesla sold to the bank. The options, or warrants, give the holder the right to buy a company's stock at a set "strike" price and date. The suit, filed in a Manhattan federal court, centres on a dispute over how JPMorgan repriced its Tesla warrants as a result of Musk's notorious 2018 tweet that he was considering taking the carmaker private. - Guardian British tax officials have ramped up efforts to claw back £1bn from fraudulent or incorrect furlough payouts, after opening up tens of thousands of investigations against companies. According to figures disclosed under freedom of information laws, HM Revenue and Customs has stepped up the number of investigations into potentially fraudulent pandemic support claims over the past eight months, with more than 26,500 interventions launched by officials since the spring. - Guardian

The gas-rich Gulf state of Qatar is poised to invest up to £100m in Rolls-Royce's plan to develop a new generation of mini nuclear reactors that are far cheaper and faster to build than traditional designs. Qatar will join billionaire French oil dynasty the Perrodo family, which made its fortune from the private oil company Perenco, and US nuclear giant Exelon Generation as Roll-Royce's partners in the project. - Telegraph

The bosses of LV= face government pressure over their £530 million deal to sell the mutual insurer to an American private equity firm after Kwasi Kwarteng urged them to reveal the fees that City firms will earn from the takeover. The business secretary said it was "absolutely right" that customers of LV= should have "transparent data" about the sums that would be paid to the bankers, lawyers and lobbyists who are working on the sale of the 178-year-old mutual to Bain Capital. - The Times

A plan by the Dutch government to try to persuade Royal Dutch Shell to retain its Netherlands headquarters by scrapping a dividend tax has been abandoned after failing to garner enough support. Opposition Dutch MPs are, however, seeking to revive alternative plans to impose an "exit tax" that could run to billions of pounds in an attempt to deter Shell from leaving by punitive means. - The Times