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Papers: Blue chips to sue 'Vote Leave' campaign

Published: 07:32 16 Jun 2016 BST

BHS store front

Rather predictably, the front pages of UK newspapers were covered with Brexit stories ahead of next week’s recent referendum.

In today’s Financial Times, the paper claims that the top executives of General Electric (NYSE:GE), Unilever (LON:ULVR) and Airbus (EPA:AIR) have threatened legal action against the official ‘Leave’ campaign after it implied that the firms were in favour of Brexit.

The companies – which the FT claims actually support EU membership – wrote a letter to ‘Vote Leave’, saying that the campaign had misused taxpayers’ money and had used their logos “for propaganda purposes”.

Another regular news item of recent weeks, the plight of BHS, also reared its head again in Thursday’s papers after its former owner and public enemy number one, Sir Philip Green, appeared before MPs on Wednesday.

The Times reports that Green has promised to “sort” the pension black-hole left by the collapse of BHS, suggesting that he could put more than £275mln into the scheme to try and resurrect it.

The billionaire, who the Times says is “trying to salvage his reputation”, told MPs that he had been drawing up plans to help the BHS employees who are facing cuts to their pensions.

Green showed up to the meeting with an old-school Nokia 6310 and a cheque book, something the Daily Mail took exception to this morning.

“Despite owning at least three multi-million pound super yachts and holidaying in exotics locations such as the Bahamas and Caribbean, the Arcadia Group owner seemed happy with his handset – which cannot receive emails data or emails.”

“And the 64-year-old continued to show his love for outdated practices by holding up a cheque book while trying to fight back claims made by Dominic Chappell that he stopped the sale of BHS because of a personal grudge against Sports Direct owner Ashley.”

The Sun called the scenes at the Select Committee hearing “astonishing” as Green broke off from one of his answer to tell Tory back-bencher Richard Fuller to “stop staring”.

 He also ordered co-chair Franck Field to get “your lady” – Labour’s Naren Buck – to stop giving him a hard time, leaving MP’s open-mouthed, according to the paper.

The Guardian reports on Iran’s “historic” deal with Boeing (NYSE:BA), as the country looks set to buy as many as 100 new aircraft from the American firm.

Boeing told the Guardian that it had “been engaged in discussions with Iranian airlines approved by the USG about potential purchases of Boeing commercial passenger airplanes and services”.

Abbas Akondi, the Iranian minister for roads and urban development, is quoted as saying that Iran had struck the deal to renovate its ageing fleet after years of sanctions.

Until recently, the United States had banned companies from selling aircraft parts to the Western Asian country.

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