Friday newspaper round-up: Cash stocks, Specsavers, TfL

(Sharecast News) - The number of banknotes in circulation in the EU is increasing despite widespread smartphone payments, new data shows, with wildfires ripping through parts of Europe fuelling demand for an emergency stash of cash. While cash plays second fiddle to contactless payments in many cities across Europe, the amount in circulation is actually going up, Philip Lane, the chief economist of the European Central Bank (ECB), said at the MacGill summer school conference in Ireland. - Guardian

Specsavers has paid £12m to its parent company controlled by its founders Doug and Dame Mary Perkins after the high street optician's profits increased by more than a quarter. The group operates nearly 3,000 optometry, audiology and ophthalmology businesses globally in at least eight countries, including more than 1,200 in the UK, through hundreds of independent partners. Specsavers shared out a payment of almost £258m to these shop owners, up from £239m in the previous year. - Guardian

The Trump administration has said it is prepared to step up its intervention in the bond market after concerns about soaring US debt triggered another global sell-off. Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, said the move to double the amount of money available to purchase long-term debt to $4bn (£2.9bn) per issue could be further increased. - Telegraph

Transport for London (TfL) could be understating the cost of fare dodging by more than £20m after officials admitted to curbing their estimates. The transport group estimated that fare evasion across the Underground network cost about £190m last year. But TfL officials told Tube Alerter, a website that tracks travel disruptions, that it applied a 10pc reduction to the amount lost to evaders because it had no way to accurately measure evasion across the network. - Telegraph

The City regulator has told consumers to avoid unregulated "loan notes" following an investigation by The Times into a rise in schemes estimated to have put billions of pounds of consumer money at risk. The Financial Conduct Authority issued a warning about loan notes, which it said were often "potential scams", and told regulated firms including banks, accountants and lawyers working on such investments to do more to prevent the "devastating" harm they are causing. - The Times