Monday newspaper round-up: National Express, Bank tax, BP

19th Oct 2009 06:18

National Express on Sunday night confirmed that it had received another takeover approach from Stagecoach despite its rival walking away from a bid last month.The bus and trains group said it would consider the Stagecoach offer but would continue to work on an equity fund-raising to strengthen its balance sheet in the meantime. In an unusual move, National Express released a statement last night confirming that an all-share offer had been received, the Times reports.Banks are being threatened with a windfall tax on profits amid mounting criticism from across the political spectrum of a return to huge bonuses. Strong financial results from American investment banks have raised the prospect of a bumper bonus season in Britain, even at the state-controlled RBS. "The Treasury is determined to take a robust stance on this issue," the source said. "Exactly what that means is a different issue", the Times reports.Iraq's cabinet has approved a deal with BP to develop the huge Rumaila oil field in the country's first international energy deal since the American-led invasion in 2003. The agreement, which was brokered in June during the first round of tendering for licences to exploit Iraq's enormous and largely untapped hydrocarbon resources, should also send "a strong signal" to other energy groups that the Iraqi administration is keen to secure deals, reports the Independent. Marcus Agius, the chairman of Barclays, has warned that Britain's banks will be damaged if regulators are too rigorous in their implementation of a global crackdown on bonuses and capital requirements while other nations, such as the US, are lax. "There is the real risk of regulatory arbitrage," Marcus Agius said in an interview in the Financial Times.Gerald Ronson, the property entrepreneur, has slashed his pay package and dividend at Heron International following the collapse in the commercial property market. According to the 2008 accounts of Heron International Holdings, just filed at Companies House, Mr Ronson received £1.67m in pay, compared to £12.89m in 2007, the Telegraph reports.Employers yesterday called upon the Government to get to grips with its ballooning debts as a new study put the true size of the public sector's net liabilities at £2,200bn, almost three times official figures. The CBI said that the Government needed to cut its planned spending by £120bn over the next six years, amid forecasts that official figures due tomorrow will show that total net borrowing has surged by another £10bn in the past month, the Times reports.The expectation of big City bonuses is helping to boost sentiment in the London property market, with asking prices jumping by 6.5% in the past month alone. Prices in the capital are on average £416,157, the highest recorded by Rightmove's monthly survey of asking prices since it began in 2002. A month ago, London sellers were asking an average of £395,560, the Times reports.The FT adds that he average asking price for homes in England and Wales has recorded unusually strong growth in the past month, according to the property website Rightmove.The increase of 2.8 per cent in the four weeks to October 10 over the previous four-week period is one of the sharpest four-weekly rises Rightmove has ever recorded. Industry representatives have warned Gordon Brown over the "unintended consequences" of tighter regulation in the mortgage market ahead of a radical review of the market to be published today by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The FSA's Mortgage Market Review is expected call for an end to self-certification mortgages, which were granted without proof of income. They are aimed at self-employed people with irregular income streams, the Telegraph reports.Hardy Underwriting, the Lloyd's of London insurer, will on Monday announce a new Bahrain-based joint venture to write reinsurance in the Middle East and North Africa as it looks to expand and diversify its business. Hardy will own its joint venture equally with Arab Insurance Group (Arig), with the risk backed more or less equally by both Arig and Hardy's Lloyd's syndicate 382, which had £250m of underwriting capacity for this year, the FT reports.