Monday newspaper round-up: British Airways, Income tax, Prudential...

6th Sep 2010 06:44

Willie Walsh has identified 12 airlines as potential acquisition targets once he completes the merger of British Airways and Iberia this year.The BA chief executive said that he had held discussions with executives of the Spanish flag carrier about future acquisitions, as he seeks to lead a wave of consolidation in the industry. Mr Walsh refused to give details of his list and said that no discussions had been held with potential targets, but analysts speculated that he could be interested in carriers such as Qantas, Cathay Pacific, American, LAN and South African, the Times reports.More than 10m people may have paid too much income tax and will be owed money by the Government due to errors in the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) tax code system. But the full scale of the problem is laid bare today. HMRC records show that in addition to the 4.3?m cases it admitted to last week, "legacy" errors may have resulted in another 5.8m people overpaying income tax before March 2008, the Telegraph reports.George Osborne will scrap the pre-Budget report this year in a break with Gordon Brown's era and a signal of a return to more normal economic policymaking. The chancellor's decision to ditch what had become a second annual Budget will save resources at the Treasury; in its place a slimmed-down autumn statement, with new forecasts, towards the end of the year, the FT reports.Britain's manufacturers will report their strongest orders for at least 15 years, according to a closely watched survey. The quarterly utlook from the EEF, the engineering lobby group, will show today that indicators of both orders and output are at their highest levels since the survey began in 1995. More manufacturers are taking on workers than at any other time in the same period, according to the EEF, the Times reports.A group of institutional shareholders is threatening to issue a joint letter demanding the resignation of Harvey McGrath as chairman of Prudential. The shareholders, who claim their frustrations are not being addressed following the Pru's failed $35bn bid for AIA Group, are preparing to renew their assault on the chairman over the next few weeks, the Telegraph reports.Britain's six biggest banks have commissioned a report to profile the creditworthiness of their business customers in a bid to break the deadlock with the Government over lending levels. The banks, which include the Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays, have agreed to pay pH, a subsidiary of Experian, the research company, to analyse the credit profiles of small businesses that are being refused funding, the Telegraph reports.Santander, the Spanish banking group, is set to launch a recruitment drive that could see it hire 6,000 people as it presses ahead with UK expansion. The bank, which has come under fire for poor customer service, plans to hire 600 people over the coming months to improve performance, the FT reports.Metro Bank may raise more capital to accelerate its branch openings in Britain. The new bank created by the American billionaire Vernon Hill could raise £30m or more on top of the £75m it had in the bank when it opened its doors in July, observers believe. The level of interest so far has dwarfed expectations, the Times reports.The world economy is recovering moderately but still faces challenges such as the need for medium-term fiscal consolidation, the IMF's deputy managing director, John Lipsky, said yesterday. Mr Lipsky said that delegates at the G20 meeting of deputy finance and central bank chiefs in South Korea "are mainly confident that there is a moderate recovery underway globally", reports the Independent.Britain's biggest care homes operator is trying to drive down its £200m annual rental bill by striking a better deal with landlords. The move comes as Southern Cross carries out a two-month strategic review into whether it can remain independent. News that Southern Cross has written to landlords and local councils to try to squeeze better terms out of them may raise the hopes of Towerbrook Capital Partners, a private equity firm that made approach for the business ten days ago. Southern Cross spurned its advances, the Times reports.PricewaterhouseCoopers will reveal a 4% increase in full-year revenues to £2.3bn today as it continues to defy the slowdown in demand for professional services. Britain's biggest accountant said its ambitious expansion plans were paying off as it extended its lead over its Big Four rivals, the Times reports. The confidence of Britain's bosses in the economic recovery could be waning after new figures reveal a decline in the number of job vacancies last month. Industries including engineering, manufacturing, financial services, training and IT all suffered a drop in the number of jobs available in August compared with July, according to the Reed Jobs Index, the Telegraph reports.The Government must radically simplify the latest corporate pensions rules or risk damaging job creation in the UK, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) warned. The trade body says laws introduced by Labour and passed at the beginning of 2010 amount to a "complex web of regulations" that bear little resemblance to the proposals put forward four years ago. David Frost, director general of the BCC, said against the backdrop of on-going changes to employment law, small and medium-sized businesses would be put off hiring new staff unless the Government made the new legislation easier to follow, the Telegraph reports.