Friday newspaper round-up: Tesco, Reckitt Benckiser, Ladbrokes

20th Nov 2009 06:28

Tesco's telecoms arm threatened a price war with the likes of BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse as it unveiled plans yesterday to offer bundled broadband and home phone packages for the first time. Britain's biggest retailer announced that it had signed a five-year deal with Cable & Wireless to help it to provide broadband and home phone services, the Times reports.Legal & General is poised to hire John Stewart, the former deputy chief executive of Barclays, as its new chairman, The Times has learnt. The UK's third-largest insurer is understood to have identified Mr Stewart, who ran the Woolwich building society until its takeover by Barclays in 2000, as its preferred candidate to replace Rob Margetts.Speculation that Reckitt Benckiser, the household cleaning products group, could be close to a merger with Colgate-Palmolive was greeted with scepticism by analysts on Thursday. Reckitt shares initially gained 3% on the speculation but closed 1% up at £31.40 as analysts said they thought a deal was improbable. Colgate shares fell 2%. Charlie Mills at Credit Suisse, which also acts as Reckitt's broker, said: "We are sceptical on the imminence of a deal between these two," the FT reports.Ladbrokes, the bookmaker, announced plans to close its call centre at Aintree, Liverpool, with the potential loss of 263 jobs. The news comes three months after Chris Bell, the chief executive, ruled out closing its two call centres at Aintree and at Harrow, Middlesex, arguing that the economic case for doing so was not "compelling", the Times reports. Britain is at growing risk of a "public debt spiral" unless the Government takes "drastic" action to cut the deficit, according to the OECD, world's leading economic institution. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said that even if Britain reduces its deficit in line with other leading nations, it will still have the rich world's biggest deficit from now until 2017 and potentially beyond, casting serious doubt on its economic credibility, the Telegraph reports. Meanwhile, the CBI has backed Conservative plans to cut the budget deficit swiftly and sharply, rejecting Gordon Brown's eight-year timetable to reduce the national debt as a "limp" approach that will prolong economic pain. Richard Lambert, director-general of the employers' group, endorsed Tory fiscal policy and welcomed the non-confrontational stance on Europe taken by party leader David Cameron. Mr Lambert stressed the CBI's apolitical nature but his comments mark a significant shift by the business community, the FT reports.The Government yesterday published details of its draft banking reform Bill which will give the UK's financial watchdog powers to claw back bankers' bonuses, and rip up their employment contracts, if they are deemed to endanger the financial system by encouraging excessive risk-taking. The Financial Services Bill will put into law a number of measures that the Government has already announced and those agreed with the G20 on reforms to the global financial system, the Independent reports.James Murdoch, annointed heir to his father's media conglomerate, News Corporation, signalled that the family love affair with newspapers is coming to an end and the business will shift its focus to television and entertainment in the future. "Structurally, television is vastly more profitable and a big opportunity," he said reports the Independent.Nicola Horlick's career as a traditional City fund manager was in effect over last night after her company sold its main management contract to Martin Gilbert's Aberdeen Asset Management for just under £5m. Bramdean Asset Management, founded two years ago by Ms Horlick, sold the contract to manage £175m of assets on behalf of Bramdean Alternatives, a listed vehicle that was at the centre of a shareholder coup earlier this year, the Times reports.Russian authorities have refused to release the body of Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer campaigning against fraud and corruption who died in a Moscow jail this week, for an independent autopsy. According to friends, the authorities rejected several requests and are only releasing the body for burial. Mr Magnitsky's funeral will be held at noon today at Moscow's Preobrazhensky cemetery, the Telegraph reports.European Union leaders on Thursday night awarded two of its top jobs to politicians relatively unknown on the international stage, after almost a decade of wrangling over how to project Europe's global presence. At a Brussels summit the EU picked consensus builders rather than star names, choosing Herman Van Rompuy, Belgium's centre-right prime minister, over Tony Blair as the EU's first full-time president, the FT reports.