Friday newspaper round-up: Euro bail-out fund, Santander, BP...

4th Feb 2011 06:38

European leaders are preparing to commit themselves to an overhaul of the eurozone's €440bn bail-out fund that would increase its lending power and give it more tools to tackle the debt crisis, according to draft summit conclusions seen by the Financial Times. The measures have been widely debated within the European Union for months.Santander, eurozone's biggest bank, yesterday postponed the £15bn flotation of its British operation, a deal originally pencilled in for the first quarter of this year. Emilio Botín, chairman of Grupo Santander, said that he was now aiming for the last quarter of 2011, subject to market conditions. Santander UK was to be floated in London as a way of raising about £3bn from the sale of a 20% stake. The bank gave little explanation for the delay, which comes despite a healthy 11% rise in after-tax profits of the UK business to £1.7bn, the Times reports.Edward Bramson last night urged Alain Grisay to stay on as chief executive of F&C Asset Management as he held out an olive branch to members of the board not evicted in yesterday's coup. Mr Bramson said he hoped that Mr Grisay would still be leading F&C in six months' time, adding: "We have had a friendly and constructive conversation." Mr Grisay, F&C chief executive since 2006, has led its five-month battle against Sherborne, Mr Bramson's vehicle. He was therefore widely expected to resign if Mr Bramson won, the Times reports.BP's attempts to quantify and quickly resolve billions of dollars in compensation claims from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill have been undercut by a ruling in a Louisiana court, which questioned the independence of the $20bn claims fund established by the British oil giant last year. Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer in charge of the fund, cannot claim to be neutral, a judge said, and is in fact acting in BP's interests, the Independent reports.Pressure is mounting on the Bank of England to raise interest rates to tackle rising inflation after data signalled that the economy has avoided a double-dip recession. Analysts said that stronger-than-expected results from the services sector pointed to an economic rebound this year in the wake of a 0.5% slide in GDP in the final three months of last year. The new data, they said, would allow the Bank of England to tackle rising inflation by increasing interest rates, which have been at a record low of 0.5% since March 2009, the Times reports.The new director general of the CBI will today make common cause with the banks, urging the Independent Commission on Banking not to pursue a break-up or take unilateral action.John Cridland will say: "We believe breaking up the banks would be a mistake. In shaping these reforms we should remember the international nature of the financial system. The UK could put itself at a significant competitive disadvantage, with negative consequences for the broader economy, by acting in isolation," the Independent reports.Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has dismissed the idea that the central bank's policies are to blame for the rise in global food prices to a record high that helped trigger political unrest in Egypt. Mr Bernanke said that the rapid growth of developing economies was behind the increase in food prices, rather than the Fed's decision to embark on a second, $600bn (£371bn) round of printing money, the Telegaph reports.ISS, an influential shareholder advisory service, has thrown its weight behind a proposal by an Apple shareholder seeking a formal succession plan for the technology group following Steve Jobs' latest medical leave. Institutional Shareholder Services endorsed the proposal by the Central Laborers' Pension Fund, Jacksonville, Illinois, which is likely to have more votes when the proposal is put before investors at Apple's annual meeting on February 23, the union pension fund said on Thursday, the FT reports.The European Central Bank (ECB) has taken a strategic gamble that the current surge in food and commodity prices is not a repeat of the inflation virus of the 1970s and will subside without the need for a monetary squeeze. Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB's president, set off sharp moves in currency and credit markets on Thursday as he sought to play down expectations of rate rises over coming months. Mr Trichet said the jump in eurozone inflation to 2.4% is a "short-term" effect of rising energy and commodity costs, the Telegraph reports.Banker pay in the City is climbing after Deutsche Bank revealed that staff were paid an average of €373,000 (£318,000, $456,000) for last year, the highest compensation of any big bank. Deutsche's investment bank, which employs 8,000 people in London, said that its total bill for wages, bonuses and other rewards, grew last year by 17 per cent to €5.9 billion. The numbers do not include the bonuses earned in respect of work done in 2010 and due to be paid out to staff later this month. These will be down on last year, the Times reports.Senior executives at JPMorgan Chase received warnings that Bernard Madoff's investments business could be fraudulent but took no action and continued working with him, according to a lawsuit against the bank. The suit, filed by Irving Picard, the trustee trying to recover money for investors cheated in Madoff's $65bn (£40bn) Ponzi scheme, seeks $6.4bn from JPMorgan Chase, which served as Madoff's banker for decades. The complaint was filed in December but unsealed yesterday, the Times reports.