Friday newspaper round-up: Bank of England, Food prices, HSBC...

3rd Sep 2010 06:32

A senior Bank of England official reignited the debate over levies on financial transactions yesterday, saying that policymakers needed to address the "myopia and volatility" in the markets.Andrew Haldane, executive director for financial stability at the Bank, said that disincentives may be needed to tackle endemic short-termism. They could include levies on investments to promote longer-term behaviour and discourage high-frequency churning, Mr Haldane said in a paper to be delivered at a Beijing conference, reports the Times.Another oil rig has exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, reportedly causing a mile-long slick - just over four months since BP's Deepwater Horizon catastrophe triggered the worst offshore spill in history. All 13 men working on the site, owned by US company Mariner Energy, have been rescued, after a helicopter spotted a blazing structure 100 miles from the Louisiana coastline. "Thirteen people were seen huddled together in the water wearing gumby suits or immersion suits, water protection suits, so we were able to confirm that all people were accounted for," said John Edwards, a Coast Guard spokesman, the Telegraph reports.Russia announced a 12-month extension of its grain export ban on Thursday, raising fears about a return to the food shortages and riots of 2007-08 which spread through developing countries dependent on imports. The announcement by Vladimir Putin came as the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation called an emergency meeting to discuss the wheat shortage, and riots in Mozambique left seven dead, the FT reports.Freakish weather conditions and soaring demand from China, Brazil and other fast-emerging economies have pushed meat prices around the world to a 20-year high. International food prices have risen to their highest in two years, shooting up five per cent between July and August. Wheat is up by more than 50% since May. Meat prices are at their highest since 1990 on the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation's index, up 16% on last year and almost a third higher than at the beginning of last year, the Independent reports.HSBC may move its headquarters from Britain if the Government's new Banking Commission calls for a break-up of lenders. Stuart Gulliver, who runs HSBC's global banking business, warned that the bank could leave London if it is ordered to split its investment bank from its retail lending operations. Should the commission recommend a split, "we would have to see how we responded. There could be significant implications for where we may choose to headquarter our institution," Mr Gulliver told a banking conference in London, the Times reports.America's wave of new financial regulation is likely to prompt the country's biggest financial institutions to break themselves up, according to the chairman of the Federal Reserve. "My belief is that a combination of tougher oversight and tighter capital requirements will take away the attractiveness [of being big]," Ben Bernanke told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) in Washington DC yesterday, the Telegraph reports.The Federal Reserve was powerless to stop the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the central bank's chairman also said yesterday, but he was too scared to say so in public at the time. Ben Bernanke admitted that he had been less than straightforward in his testimony to Congress in the days after the investment bank went bankrupt as he thought that admitting the limits of the Fed's power would only make the market panic worse, the Independent adds.Leading UK and continental European companies are increasingly shunning banks from Spain, Italy and even Germany because they do not believe the Europe-wide stress testing of banks gave a true picture of their financial health. Corporate treasurers from groups with revenues of more than $240bn told the Financial Times they were conducting their own tests to gauge for themselves banks' robustness.Canadian officials may try to block a Chinese bid for Potash Corporation amid concerns about a potential conflict of interest. China is the world's largest consumer of potash and would have an incentive to keep prices low if it was successful in bidding for PotashCorp, the world's largest producer of the fertiliser. Bill Boyd, energy minister of Saskatchewan, the Canadian province where PotashCorp is based, said: "It would seem to us at first glance that their interest and the interest of taxpayers of Saskatchewan may not be aligned," the Times reports.Carluccio's gave rival restaurant groups a fillip yesterday when it announced a £90m bid from a Dubai hospitality conglomerate. Landmark Group, which already has a 4% stake in the chain founded by the television chef Anthony Carluccio ? as well as its Middle Eastern franchise ? has made a recommended offer worth 142p a share, a premium of about 48% to the share price at Wednesday's close, the Times reports.Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul owner of The Times, The Sun and the News of The World, took a 6% pay cut to $16.8m (£10.9m) last year, his smallest pay packet since 2003. Although his salary was unchanged at $8.1m, his bonus dropped 20% to $4.4m. The 79-year-old billionaire chairman and chief executive of News Corporation was also granted $4.1m of stock and share options, to take his total shareholding to 317m shares, worth $4.5bn, the Telegraph reports.