“Tesco is left embarrassed by director’s fast checkout” is the headline in The Times (£) this morning on the surprise departure of Tesco director and Compass Group chief exec Richard Cousins.

“Richard Cousins, once widely tipped to become chairman of Tesco, stepped down as senior independent director at the supermarket chain yesterday, offering no explanation for the surprise move,” The Times writes. “The departure of Mr Cousins, chief executive of Compass Group, is deeply embarrassing to Tesco at a time when it is trying to rebuild its relationship with investors.”

The surprise departure of Cousins after just two years on the board “will be seen as a blow for the supermarket chain by the City”, writes The Guardian. “The Compass boss has a heavyweight reputation in the financial world… bringing much-needed experience to the board in handling crises and running a FTSE 100 business.” (The Guardian)

Writing in The Guardian Nils Pratley says the lack of explanation over Cousins’ departure is “feeble”. He writes: “If the senior person in the role has quit after two, shareholders expect better than a brush-off. They, after all, paid Cousins’ £115,000 fees last year and the SID is meant to have a direct connection with the owners… Shareholders must assume a serious falling out. In as far as anything can be read into the Tesco chairman John Allan’s vague scripted remarks, a clash of some variety seems likely.” (The Guardian)

A new burst of inflation is set to hit the British high street, as prices edged up in December and analysts predicted that the shop price deflation seen over the past three years is coming to an end (The Telegraph).

Households are being told to brace for more price rises on fuel, food and other essentials in 2017 after the new year started with petrol at a two-year high. (The Guardian)

Two of Britain’s biggest producers of Cornish pasties are joining forces in a multimillion-pound deal that will give them greater ‎firepower in a battle with Greggs for market share. Sky News broke the story that Samworth Brothers, the privately held food group‎ that owns the Ginsters pasty brand, has agreed to buy the West Cornwall Pasty Co for an undisclosed sum (Sky News). The Times (£) notes that Enact, a fund run by the Leeds-based private equity fund Endless, boasts Danny Mills, once of Leeds United and Manchester City, as an investor and a member of its advisory board.

Britvic has made a fresh bet on the recovery of the Brazilian economy by acquiring its second soft drinks business there in less than 18 months (The Times £). Analysts at Citi said the deal was “strategically sensible” and “shows management’s commitment to internationalisation” (The Financial Times £)

The collapse of BHS looks set to generate the biggest collection of corporate records and financial data in history. According to a report by FRP Advisory covering its work from July to October, the firm recovered more than 4,000 boxes of hard copy records, plus almost 200 terabytes of data from servers and computers. (The Times £)

The long-awaited launch of a nicotine inhaler backed by Sir Terry Leahy has suffered a setback after British American Tobacco pulled the plug. Consort Medical said that Nicovations, a BAT subsidiary, had ended supply agreements after the product failed to come to market by the end of last year. (The Times £)

The FT’s Lex column notes that Monsanto shares trade at an 18% discount to the $128 per share in cash that Bayer has agreed to pay for the group. Even allowing for the size, complexity and risks of the deal, that discount looks large. (The Financial Times £)

English sparkling wine has replaced Champagne as the official bubbly of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race in a major victory over the French. Bottles of Chapel Down – which is based in Kent and supplied wine to the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge – will be handed over to the winning crew. (The Daily Mail)

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