Risk Channel delivers the latest, most relevant and useful business intelligence to key decision makers and influencers, each weekday morning.

Kenny Alexander, the former chief executive of Entain, which owns Ladbrokes and Coral, has been charged with conspiracy to commit bribery and fraud. Alexander is among 11 individuals facing prosecution for seven alleged offences in relation to the provision of gambling services in Turkey between 2011 and 2018. Alongside Alexander, Lee Feldman, Entain’s former chair, Richard Cooper, the company’s former finance director, Robert Hoskin, its former legal director, and James Humberstone have been charged. Six other people who did not work for Entain have also been charged. Richard Las, the director of HMRC’s fraud investigation service, said: "This has been a complex and international investigation. These are serious charges that relate to conspiracy to defraud, bribery, cheating the public revenue, evasion of income tax and perverting the course of justice, among others."

 

Financial Times

The Daily Telegraph

Daily Mirror

The Guardian

How to Prevent Financial Fraud with Real-Time Graph Analytics

Fraud networks are growing more sophisticated, connected, and fast-moving. Traditional detection tools can’t keep up - and risk teams are left reacting too late.

This on-demand webinar shows how real-time graph analytics helps risk leaders detect fraud rings, surface hidden relationships, and stop threats before they scale. You'll see how leading organisations are already using this technology to shift from retrospective investigation to real-time prevention.

What you’ll learn:

• How graph analytics exposes non-obvious connections
• Real-world case studies from financial services
• Why speed and context are critical to fraud prevention
• How to integrate graph insights into your current risk stack

If you're responsible for protecting revenue, reputation, and regulatory standing - this session is essential viewing.

👉 Watch now and see how the next generation of anti-fraud strategy works.

 

WHSmith's board says it continues to support chief executive Carl Cowling as it awaits the results of an investigation by Deloitte into a £30m profit overstatement. The issue, discovered during a year-end review, is believed to be limited to the US travel business. WHSmith anticipates a reduction in pre-tax profits to £110m for the year ending August 31. Following the announcement, shares plummeted by 42%, reaching a 12-year low. Meanwhile, the high street bakery chain Greggs has asked the former finance chief at WHSmith, Robert Moorhead, to delay his appointment as an independent non-executive director and chair of the audit committee until Deloitte's review is completed.

 

Bloomberg Tax

Financial Times

Daily Mail

The Daily Telegraph

A review by the Cabinet Office has revealed 11 data breaches across public sector entities, including HMRC, the Metropolitan Police, the benefits system and the MoD. The review was triggered by the 2023 leak of personal data of about 10,000 serving officers in the Police Service of Northern Ireland. The science, innovation and technology committee, along with the Information Commissioner, forced the review's release on Thursday, 22 months after it was completed. The government said it had delivered on 12 of the 14 recommendations about toughening up data security, but Information Commissioner John Edwards called for Whitehall to go "further and faster" to "put their practices in order."

 

The Guardian

Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude chatbot, says the technology has been "weaponised" by hackers to carry out sophisticated cyber attacks. The company says its tools were used by hackers "to commit large-scale theft and extortion of personal data." In another case, North Korean scammers used Claude to fraudulently get remote jobs at top US companies. Anthropic says it was able to disrupt the threat actors and has reported the cases to the authorities along with improving its detection tools. Using AI to help write code has increased in popularity as the tech becomes more capable and accessible.

 

BBC News

The growing presence in reinsurance of private investors including hedge funds and family offices threatens to destabilise the market for catastrophe cover, Munich Re director Stefan Golling tells the Financial Times.

 

Financial Times

Unit labour costs in German industry were 22% higher last year than the average of 27 industrialised countries examined by the Germany Economic Institute IW in a report seen by Reuters. "The shortage of skilled workers is pushing wages further up," observed Christoph Schroeder, the study's author. "Costs at the German location are likely to continue rising in the coming years."

 

Reuters

Italian consumer morale fell by more than expected in August whereas businesses sentiment was stable, according to national statistics agency ISTAT.  Its consumer confidence index fell one point from July to 96.2,  below a median forecast of 96.6 in a Reuters poll of six analysts. The composite business morale index, which combines surveys of the manufacturing, retail, construction and services sectors, was unchanged in August at 93.6.

 

Reuters

The Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) suggests Rachel Reeves should introduce a new tax on bank reserves at the Bank of England (BoE) to generate £8bn annually. The proposal draws inspiration from Margaret Thatcher's 1981 deposit tax. Additionally, the IPPR estimates that the Chancellor could recover £12bn by halting loss-making bond sales under the quantitative tightening scheme. Carsten Jung from the IPPR said: "What started as a programme to boost the economy is now a massive drain on taxpayer money." Responding to the idea, a spokesman for UK Finance said: "The banking sector is very important to UK tax revenues, making a total tax contribution of almost £45bn last year. Banks based here already pay both a corporation tax surcharge and a bank levy. Adding another tax would make the UK less internationally competitive."

 

Financial Times

Daily Mirror

The Guardian

The Daily Telegraph

New Zealand’s NZ$76bn ($44bn) Super Fund is betting on European stocks, in a sign that some global asset owners are losing confidence in the long-term outlook for US equities. 

 

Financial Times

The shift from a manufacturing model to a digital one is proving difficult and expensive for many legacy auto companies as they attempt to compete with Tesla and other EV makers.

 

Financial Times

Drax power plant is under investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for allegedly misleading investors and the UK government about its wood sourcing sustainability. The company has faced criticism for receiving substantial renewable energy subsidies while burning wood pellets imported from North America. Frankie Mayo, an analyst at Ember, said: "It's right that the UK's largest emitter faces additional scrutiny." Drax has previously been fined £25m for inadequate sustainability data and is now subject to a full audit of its supply chain for 2023.

 

The Guardian

Chemical companies are lobbying UK MPs to limit regulations on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), commonly known as forever chemicals. These firms argue that certain types, like fluoropolymers, should not face the same restrictions as other PFAS due to their perceived lower risk. However, scientists dispute these claims, likening the industry's tactics to those of Big Tobacco. Dr Rainer Lohmann from the University of Rhode Island said: "This magic claim that fluoropolymers are benign . . . just ignores the fact that . . . you have a major problem."

 

The Guardian

Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary has said bonuses are to increase for staff who spot oversized baggage. O'Leary said he made "absolutely no apology" for catching people who are "scamming the system." About 200,000 passengers per year are charged luggage fees at airport gates and Ryanair has "more work to do to get rid of them," he said. "I am still mystified by the number of people with rucksacks who still think they're going to get through the gate and we won't notice the rucksack", O'Leary added.

 

Sky News