Friday paper round-up: Tories to unveil Green Investment Bank

19th Mar 2010 06:39

A Conservative government would put a carbon tax on electricity generation to encourage investment in renewables and nuclear power, David Cameron will say on Friday as he sets out his party's long-awaited energy strategy. The plan will be included in a consultation paper published on Friday, setting out proposals that could go into an energy bill in the Tories' first legislative programme should they win the general election, the FT reports.Huge offshore wind parks and new nuclear reactors to be financed by a state-backed Green Investment Bank would be built under plans to reform energy policy and meet tough emission reduction targets to be announced by the Conservatives today. In a package of measures with far-reaching implications for industry and consumers, David Cameron is also expected to call for a floor price for carbon to be set as a way of stimulating investment in cleaner forms of energy, the Times adds.Germany has taken its fear of financial speculators to new heights by suggesting it may deploy spies to monitor investors who target currencies. Wolfgang Schaeuble, German finance minister, told the Bundestag that to protect the euro the government might tell its intelligence agencies "to set up surveillance of who is getting together with whom for which kinds of speculative processes, and where", the Telegraph reports.Outgoing ITV executive chairman Michael Grade walked away from the broadcaster with a £1.2m bonus after resigning at the end of last year. The man who was hailed as the saviour of ITV when he joined the company at the beginning of 2007 saw his total pay leap from £934,000 to £2.1m during his last year in charge. His bonus was 141% of his £825,000 annual salary, just shy of the 150% maximum allowed by the company. It was paid entirely in cash, the Telegraph reports.The re-emergence of the British motor industry is shifting up a gear, with £2.6bn worth of investment flowing into the UK, safeguarding or creating thousands of jobs. Nissan is to start mass-production of electric vehicles in Sunderland; Ford plants in Dagenham, Southampton and Bridgend will build the next generation of cleaner diesel and petrol engines for its cars around the world; and the Formula One team McLaren is to build supercars in Woking to rival Ferrari and Lamborghini in the retail market, the Times reports.Meanwhile, nearly 37,500 more cars rolled off British production lines last month than in February 2009, the fourth successive monthly rise. Commercial vehicle production increased even more sharply, shooting up by 74% to 10,226 vehicles in February, reflecting the gradual return of business confidence. Engine manufacture also rose, increasing by 59% to 198,807, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said yesterday, reports the Independent.Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Reserve officials were warned by a leading Wall Street rival that Lehman Brothers was incorrectly calculating a key measure of its financial health months before its collapse in 2008, people familiar with the matter say. Former Merrill Lynch officials said they contacted regulators about the way Lehman measured its liquidity position for competitive reasons. The Merrill officials said they were coming under pressure from their trading partners and investors, who feared that Merrill was less liquid than Lehman, the FT reports.Royal Bank of Scotland on Thursday unveiled a new tougher reward scheme for senior executives built around a range of performance measures, as the state-backed bank moved to introduce a more balanced pay structure The new incentive plan published in RBS's annual report could pay as much as £4.9m ($7.5m) to Stephen Hester, chief executive, the FT reports.Alistair Darling faces pressure from Gordon Brown to fund pre-election giveaways as better-than-expected borrowing figures lifted some of the gloom about public finances. Improving tax receipts led some experts to predict that the Chancellor could undershoot his deficit forecast by as much as £13bn, but the Treasury played down the extent of any windfall, while aides insisted that Mr Darling would resist any last-minute moves to sweeten next week's Budget, the Times reports.Labour does plan to raise taxes next year if it wins the election, Lord Mandelson revealed yesterday. The First Secretary admitted that "further" raising of taxes beyond the range of measures already announced would have to be considered a year from now. Public spending cuts would also have to be examined, he said. Lord Mandelson's comments come just a week after Liam Byrne, the Treasury number two, stated that no new tax rises would be needed to help pay down the deficit. That sparked astonishment from economists and opposition politicians, the Telegraph reports.Lord Myners has said that every bank should appoint a "cynical Scot" to its audit committees as a sure way of smothering the ambitions of the board. The City Minister told the Future of Banking Commission on Thursday that the key to guarding against another crisis is to ensure that bank boards are subject to proper challenges from a "devil's advocate" who would not simply accept the "conventional wisdom", the Telegraph reports.Prudential has been forced into an embarrassing reversal by its shareholders after its chief executive scrapped plans to take up a directorship at French bank Société Générale. The company, which is attempting to buy AIG's Asian assets for $35.5bn (£23,2bn), confirmed Tidjane Thiam would not be taking the non-executive role in a surprise announcement yesterday, the Telegraph reports.Germany hardened its stance against a European bailout of Greece last night by effectively calling the bluff of its Prime Minister after he suggested that Athens could seek emergency cash funds from the International Monetary Fund. With German public opinion strongly against a rescue package from the eurozone, Angela Merkel, the Chancellor, seemed to have rejected George Papandreou's latest plea for a bailout plan to be drawn up, even if it was never needed, the Times reports.The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has confirmed what many buyers have found out the hard way - buying a second-hand car is a tricky business, and sharp practices may be costing unwary customers hundreds of millions of pounds every year. An OFT investigation launched after nearly 72,000 complaints to Consumer Direct last year concluded that the second-hand car market is "often not working well for consumers", according to the report published yesterday, the Independent reports.