Six of Britain’s biggest employer groups fear compromise deal brokered with bosses and union leaders is at risk

• Nils Pratley: The big quarrels over the workers’ rights bill have barely started

Britain’s biggest business groups have urged Conservative peers to stop blocking Labour’s workers’ rights bill in the House of Lords to avoid throwing away a compromise deal reached with trade unions.

With the clock ticking before Christmas, six of the country’s biggest employers’ groups warned that failure to pass the legislation before parliament rises on Thursday could put at risk a deal brokered with bosses and union leaders.

Details of financing structure to be reviewed by culture secretary and regulators before deal can proceed

The owner of the Daily Mail has secured funding for a £500m takeover of the Telegraph, in a crucial development that paves the way for the group to announce the terms of its acquisition on Monday.

Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) has agreed to pay the sum in two instalments, according to weekend reports. An initial payment of £400m will be funded by an increase in the group’s debt with its longstanding lender NatWest and existing company cash.

Ineffective systems culminated in serious case of Covid fraud that cost UK taxpayers £800,000

Nationwide has been fined £44m by the City watchdog over “weak” financial crime controls that culminated in a serious case of Covid fraud that cost UK taxpayers £800,000.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined the building society for failures stretching over nearly five years. It said the lender had been aware that some customers were using personal accounts for business activity, in a breach of its own terms.

Weaker-than-forecast quarterly data for Larry Ellison’s tech company shows slowdown in revenue growth and big rise in spending

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Oracle’s shares tumbled 15% on Thursday in response to the company’s quarterly financial results, disclosed the day before.

Roughly $80bn vanish from the value of the business software company co-founded by Donald Trump ally Larry Ellison, falling from $630bn (£470bn) to $550bn and fuelling fears of a bubble in artificial intelligence-related stocks. Shares in the chipmaker Nvidia, seen as a bellwether for the AI boom, fell after Oracle’s.

Emma Walmsley’s praise for US pharmaceutical market piles pressure on UK government

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The chief executive of GSK has declared that the US is the best place for pharmaceutical companies to invest.

Emma Walmsley said the US led the world in launches of drugs and vaccines and, alongside China, was the best market for business development.