Flash Briefing: May turns to Corbyn; Boeing upgrade not ready; Penguin stands firm on Ace

By Linda van Tilburg

In today’s global headlines:

  • Prime Minister Theresa May has reached across the floor of the House of Commons to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, to try break the Brexit impasse. May also announced late yesterday after a seven-hour Cabinet meeting that she will be seeking another extension to the Brexit negotiation period. She believes her latest attempt will break the logjam in Parliament, after her deal has been voted down three times.
  • While MP’s in Westminster can’t seem to agree on Brexit, they have agreed on the way forward for the big four accountancy firms, PWC, Deloitte, KPMG and EY, and said they should be broken up in order to loosen their stranglehold on the audit market. It goes much further than the watchdog’s initial proposal of an operational breakup. MPs feel professional scepticism needed for good audits are undermined by cash-cow consulting work. And the Financial Reporting Council has announced that it will start probing KPMG’s risk management and whether it can deliver high-quality audits in the UK after a quality assessment found that 50% of audits were below standard.
  • Boeing says it needs more time to finish a software upgrade for its grounded 737 Max jetliners. 29 March was given as the date when they could have the paper work for a revamp ready, but they now say it won’t be ready until “the coming weeks”. The 737 Max models were grounded after similarities began to emerge between the crash in Ethiopia and another off the coast of Indonesia, which killed 346 people in total.
  • Shares in the ride-hailing company Lyft continued to slump yesterday, falling below its $72 initial public offering price. It is a worrying sign for other unicorns, such as Uber, Pinterest, Postmates and Slack who saw Lyft as a test case of high-value start-ups going public. The price of Bitcoin briefly soared by more than 20% to top $5,000 for the first time this year, which some believed could be because of an April fool’s joke.
  • South Africans have reacted with anger to the revelation that ANC-Secretary-General Ace Magashule has catapulted himself to the top of the state capture tree. Magashule reacted with a popular tactic adopted by politicians when they are in trouble; he accused the media of spreading fake news. The twitterati would have none of it coming down on him like a ton of bricks. More on this on the Biznews website. Meanwhile Penguin Random House says they will not withdraw Pieter-Louis Myburgh’s book on Magashule and they have not seen any legal action so far.
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