Friday newspaper round-up: Banks, Meta, John Lewis, Big Four accountancy firms

(Sharecast News) - John Healey is poised to tax Britain's banks in his 28 October budget, to help offset the damage inflicted on the public finances by war in the Middle East, the Guardian understands. The chancellor is in Bangkok, where the International Monetary Fund has praised the UK's progress towards balancing the books, urging him to "stay the course". To keep the Treasury's deficit reduction plans on track in the face of rising government borrowing costs, the Guardian understands Healey has decided to tap the financial sector for additional revenue. - Guardian

Meta on Thursday launched a new open-weight AI model which it claims rivals, and in some cases outperforms, similar products from leading Chinese developers. Muse Spark Open "is the most capable US open-weight model to date," Meta's chief of AI Alexandr Wang wrote on X. Unlike so-called closed models - such as Anthropic's Claude or OpenAI's ChatGPT - developers can download the parameters, known as weights and biases, of an open-weight model and modify them. - Guardian

John Lewis will put its staff hotel in Snowdonia up for sale amid high running costs. The Bala Lake Hotel in North Wales is one of five hotels run by the John Lewis Partnership (JLP) where staff are able to receive discounted holidays. The site features a spa retreat and adventure activities such as zip-lining and archery. - Telegraph

The attempted UAE takeover of The Telegraph was a threat to press freedom, the media regulator found. The Gulf autocracy's offer via RedBird IMI, ultimately blocked by a change in the law, would have gone against the public interest, Ofcom reported to ministers. The regulator's findings are expected to be published on Friday after a two-and-a-half-year wait. - Telegraph

The Big Four accountancy firms have won £1.5bn of public sector contracts so far in 2026, the most in any year on record apart from during the Covid-19 crisis, according to new research. Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC have enjoyed a surge in government work despite a pledge by Labour to "slash" spending on external consultants. The £1.5bn is the Big Four's second-most successful calendar year for state contracts since comparable records began in 2012, beaten only by emergency contracts during the height of the pandemic in 2020. It is already significantly more than in the whole of 2025. - The Times

City advisers are set to share in a fees bonanza worth £334.5m for selling easyJet to an American private equity firm. Bankers, lawyers and public relations advisers will share the fee pool for advising on and financing a £5.7bn buyout of the budget airline by Apollo Global Management, which has been backed by easyJet's founder, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou. - The Times