Friday newspaper round-up: SNP, New Look, Greece, US shale

15th May 2015 07:07

The Scottish National Party is prepared to defy David Cameron and push ahead with a second Scottish independence referendum without Westminster's permission if the prime minister refuses any future demand to hold one, the Guardian reports.New Look has ditched plans to list on the stock market after being sold to South Africa's Brait for £1.9bn, writes the Telegraph. Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has refused any bailout plan that would send Greece into a "death spiral", saying he wished the country still had the drachma and had not entered the Eurozone, the Guardian reports.The boss of Continental Resources, one of the leading figures of the US shale revolution, has said that the slowdown in output is only temporary and dismissed a Saudi claim that its strategy of squeezing American producers was working, writes the Financial Times.Talktalk has accused BT of bullying tactics, trying to bully the new government by threatening to pull the plug on an upgrade to the UK broadband network if it is broken up, reports The Times.Bank of England governor Mark Carney has said that an UK referendum on EU membership should take place "as soon as necessary" as the prospect of a vote is stoking business uncertainty, The Guardian reports.The US Justice Department is to tear up a 2012 settlement related to alleged interest-rate rigging at UBS, according to The Wall Street Journal.Jim O'Neill, the former Goldman Sachs economist who coined the term 'BRICs', is set to become commercial secretary for city devolution and infrastructure at the Treasury, according to The Telegraph.The Times said: "British households collectively became £1.5 trillion richer last year in the largest annual increase of wealth as the value of property and financial assets increased."