Tuesday's newspaper round-up: William Hill results glitch, Leahy talks...

20th Jan 2015 05:14

William Hill was forced to release its latest trading statement 11 hours earlier than planned after an administrative error, The Telegraph reported. According to the paper, the bookmaker officially sent out the figures, which showed that profits fell 7% in the fourth quarter, at 8pm on Monday, after the update was accidentally emailed to analysts.According to The Guardian, the former chief executive of Tesco, Sir Terry Leahy, has broken his silence on the crisis engulfing the country's biggest retailer, claiming there was a failure of leadership under his successor, Philip Clarke.The Telegraph wrote that the International Monetary Fund has downgraded its outlook for global growth for the second time in just three months. The Washington-based lender said the "shot in the arm" for firms from tumbling oil prices would not be enough to lift countries out of their economic malaise.Retail crime fell last year but thieves were more selective, according to The Telegraph, moving up market to target top-of-the-range electrical and computer goods. Their total haul was valued at £603m, the paper said, which is an increase of 18%. Furthermore, the average value of each theft jumped 36% to £241, which is the highest level for a decade, the paper noted.The Daily Mail has said that Ed Miliband's plan to impose a mansion tax is 'crude' and would end up 'clobbering' people, Lord Mandelson warned last night. The paper continued by saying that the Labour grandee launched a stinging attack of the party leader's flagship policy claiming it was 'short-termist'.UK fraud-busters have dropped their probe into "serious accounting improprieties" at IT firm Autonomy, following US giant Hewlett-Packard's disastrous $11.1bn (£7.3bn) takeover in 2011, The Independent wrote. The deal made a fortune for Autonomy's founder Mike Lynch, according to the newspaper but HP wrote off $8.8bn on the purchase a year later, of which $5.5bn was put down to alleged accounting fraud.