News round up: Apple, BSkyB, Pension, Greece, Glencore, William Hill and City jobs.

Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) was condemned by leading charities for "preventing direct donation from apps". The report, produced by The Big Society Network, said: "When considering the potential of giving powered by apps, the Apple app store’s policy was highlighted repeatedly as a barrier to significant uptake."

The charities added that Apple’s policies forced them "into the arms of [Google] Android", where users were significantly less likely to spend money because Android customers buy fewer apps and spend less on them and through them. The report added that while technology offered huge opportunities for charities most charities struggled to properly use it to their advantage.

Apple has been criticised in the past for its attitude to charity, although new chief executive Tim Cook has introduced an employee-giving scheme, writes the Telegraph.

BSkyB

BSkyB’s dominance of live televised football is so important to the business that its share price would crash if it were to lose the coverage, according to Kelvin MacKenzie, who is launching a rival sports broadcaster. Mr MacKenzie, a former editor of The Sun newspaper, claimed BSkyB shares would halve if regulators took action to break up the broadcaster’s "cartel" with football’s governing bodies around live match broadcast rights. He also claimed BSkyB’s £195m deal with the football league is "wholly illegal," according to The Telegraph.

Pension

More than 12,000 former public sector workers have retired on pensions worth at least £50,000 a year — twice the average national wage in Britain — according to a report by the Intergenerational Foundation. Taxpayer liabilities for public sector pensions have swelled to £45,000 a household, with government employees enjoying vastly better pension coverage than their private sector counterparts, according to the charity.

About 88% of public sector workers are entitled to pensions related to their final salaries, which are typically the most generous, compared with only 10% in the private sector, the charity found, The Times reports.

Greece

More than £25bn was wiped off the value of Britain's biggest companies on Tuesday as traders dumped risky assets and fled to safety as fears grew that Greece will leave the euro and trigger a fresh crisis. The FTSE 100 slid 1.8 per cent to close at its lowest level this year, falling 100 points to 5,554, following the Greek electorate's rejection of the austerity measures that are a condition of its two bail-outs, worth a combined €219bn.

European markets followed suit, with Germany's Dax dropping almost 2 per cent and France's CAC sliding nearly 3 per cent. The US Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 1.3 per cent in early trading after digesting the weekend's tumultuous developments for a second day, The Telegraph says.

Glencore

Links between Glencore -the world’s largest commodities trader- and an Israeli billionaire in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been highlighted by an anti-corruption campaign group on the eve of the FTSE 100 giant’s first annual meeting since listing a year ago. Glencore is being urged to carry out and publish an independent audit into whether its ties to Dan Gertler, a friend of Congo’s President Kabila, pose any risk of corruption.

Global Witness has examined how offshore companies associated with Mr Gertler acquired stakes in key mines by allegedly paying only a small fraction of their estimated commercial values. The detailed investigation, shown to The Times on the eve of today’s annual meeting, sheds light on opaque dealings by companies with key intermediaries in resource-rich developing countries where corruption is rife.

William Hill

The chairman of William Hill mounted the first corporate fight-back against the "Shareholder Spring" on Tuesday and criticised investors for blindly voting against the company's pay policies. Gareth Davis said he had "no intention" of backing down on a £1.2m bonus for Ralph Topping, chief executive - even though 49.9% of investors failed to approve the remuneration report.

The bookmaker tackled the rebellion just hours after Aviva announced that Andrew Moss had quit as chief executive with immediate effect. Last week 59% of investors refused to back Aviva's pay policies. Mr Moss, the third FTSE 100 boss to be toppled following investor pressure, will be paid a £1.75m severance package, according to The Telegraph.

City jobs

Nearly 100,000 City jobs have been lost since 2007 and London’s position as the world’s leading financial centre is under threat from the Far East, according to a report being published today. The Centre for Economics and Business Research said that the average number of City jobs was likely to have dropped to 255,000 this year.

This is the lowest level since 1996 and down from its previous estimate of 288,000 and a total of 354,000 jobs in 2007. It comes not long after Lloyds Banking Group said that it would cut 1,600 jobs and Royal Bank of Scotland axed 464 posts, The Times says.