Friday newspaper round-up: PwC, UK pension funds, wind farms

6th Sep 2024 07:24

(Sharecast News) - The consultancy PwC has told its employees it is going to begin tracking their working locations to ensure that all workers spend "a minimum of three days a week" in the office or at client sites. In a memo sent to its 26,000 UK employees, the big four accounting firm announced that it will start monitoring how often employees work from home in the same way it monitors how many chargeable hours they work. - Guardian

The UK needs £1tn of fresh investment over the next decade if the government is to hit its economic growth targets, a City taskforce has said. The Capital Markets of Tomorrow report, led by the City veteran and former boss of Legal & General Sir Nigel Wilson, said that in order to achieve at least 3% annual growth, the UK would have to attract around £100bn of investment per year, divided between key sectors. - Guardian

One of the UK's biggest housing developers is seeking to build tens of thousands of homes on green belt land as part of Sir Keir Starmer's efforts to revolutionise planning reforms. Vistry Group said the majority of the 75,000 plots in its so-called strategic land bank are on green belt sites, making it "uniquely positioned" to help deliver on Labour's manifesto pledge to build 1.5m homes over the next five years. - Telegraph

British pension funds are among the worst in developed economies for backing their home stock market, according to research that will fuel the debate about reform of UK retirement pots to boost the London Stock Exchange. Only 4.4 per cent of assets in UK pension funds are invested in British equities, down from an estimated 6.1 per cent last year, analysis by New Financial, a think tank, has found. The proportion stood at more than 50 per cent 25 years ago. - The Times

New wind farms due to be built towards the end of this decade will add only £5 to household energy bills and will reduce volatility in prices, a leading forecaster has predicted. A record number of renewable energy projects were secured in the latest annual auction round this week, when 131 won government contracts to deliver clean energy. - The Times