Friday newspaper round-up: Barclays mulls new iShares offer

15th May 2009 06:16

Barclays may backtrack on a deal to sell its iShares unit to CVC, the private equity group, and instead offload its entire asset management division.The bank is in talks to sell Barclays Global Investors (BGI), which owns the iShares fund management operation, to bidders believed to include BlackRock, for an estimated £6.5bn, reports the Times.The FT adds that the talks on the potential sale of BGI are the outcome of an initial auction for iShares, the fast-growing exchange-traded funds unit of BGI, which Barclays agreed to sell to CVC Capital Partners, the private equity group, for $4.2bn last month.Vodafone made the first move in an expected price war between mobile phone companies by abolishing roaming charges for British customers travelling in Europe.Under the terms of the three-month deal beginning on June 1, Vodafone's customers will be able to call and text phones in Britain from 35 European countries for the price they would be charged in Britain, reports the Times.Lord Myners has been described as "naive" by a parliamentary committee for failing to ensure that Sir Fred Goodwin was fired rather than paid off with a £17m pension by the Royal Bank of Scotland. According to a hard-hitting report on City pay by the Treasury Select Committee - which is investigating the banking crisis - the financial services secretary was "naive" in his handling of the departure of the former bank boss, reports the Telegraph.The backlash against boardroom pay hit another FTSE 100 company when more than half of Amec shareholders refused to endorse its remuneration report. Just over 40% of the votes cast at the engineering group's annual meeting opposed the report on salaries and bonus plans for directors. A further 13% abstained, reports the Times.Chrysler, the beleaguered US car maker, is to close a quarter of its 3,200 dealerships as it battles to restructure amid Chapter 11 bankruptcy. A statement from the US Treasury said the closures were "necessary for this company and the industry to succeed" but that President Barack Obama's automotive task force "played no role" in deciding which or how many dealers would close, the Telegraph reports.Government claims that it is leading a green energy revolution were condemned after it emerged that funding for five prominent environmental initiatives had been cut by 25% this year. Details of funding for the organisations, which include the Energy Savings Trust (EST), the Waste and Resources Action programme (Wrap), the Carbon Trust, the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP) and Envirowise, surfaced in a parliamentary answer from Joan Ruddock, a junior minister at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, reports the Times. The German government will record its biggest post-war budget deficit this year as the economic crisis sends tax revenues plummeting. Finance minister Peer Steinbrück admitted the federal deficit would exceed €50bn in 2009 and rise to €90bn next year, more than twice the previous record of €40bn set in 1996 as Germany was absorbing the huge cost of its unification. In contrast, the federal deficit last year was only €11.9bn, reports the FT.Major Rio Tinto shareholders would prefer a tie-up with its rival BHP Billiton to the miner's controversial $19.5bn (£12.8bn) deal with the Chinese state-owned Chinalco, reports the Independent.The Chinalco proposal sparked warm words from shareholders when it was launched in February for riding roughshod over investors' pre-emption rights. But Rio's rocketing share price - which has nearly tripled in the past five months - is now putting even greater pressure on the deal. Not only is the price of debt now below the interest on Chinalco's $7.2bn convertible bonds, but the rising share price has eaten any conversion premium.