Monday newspaper round-up: National Express, Vodafone, Madoff

29th Jun 2009 06:22

National Express has rejected an unsolicited takeover bid from its larger rival FirstGroup in a surprise development likely to put further pressure on the bus and rail operator.News of the board's decision to spurn the offer comes ahead of a trading update on Wednesday and only a week after the company agreed a deal with bankers to ease restrictions on its £1.2bn debt. National Express's future has been called into question by the government's refusal to renegotiate the terms of its East Coast rail franchise between London and Edinburgh. Analysts said the approach from FirstGroup suggested an agreement with the Department for Transport was imminent, the FT reports.Vodafone is considering buying T-Mobile UK in a deal that would create Britain's biggest mobile phone operator. T-Mobile UK is understood to have been placed on the market by Deutsche Telekom, its owner, which has appointed JPMorgan to advise it on its options. T-Mobile is a comparatively small player in the fiercely competitive and low-margin British market. Valued between £2.5bn and £3.4bn, it commands a market share of only 15% compared with Vodafone's 25%, the Times reports.Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, will inflame the row between the Bank of England and the Government at a speech this evening by rejecting Mervyn King's demands for greater regulatory powers. In comments that will stoke the Government's feud with the Bank's Governor, Lord Mandelson will say: "I don't support a 'twin peaks' system. The lesson of the last year is that we need a stronger regulator, not a weaker one, the Telegraph reports.Convicted fraudster Bernard Madoff will on Monday be sentenced to as long as 150 years in jail for orchestrating the largest fraud America has ever seen.Madoff, who admitted in March to running a $65bn (£40bn) Ponzi scheme for the past three decades, is facing life in prison as a result of his crimes, reports the Telegraph. Russia has been forced into an embarrassing climbdown on resource nationalism, as the credit crunch has left it unable to invest in the development of its assets. In a surprise move, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin invited Royal Dutch Shell to help develop two new oil and gas fields on Sakhalin Island, just three years after the government forced the company to cede majority control in the Sakhalin 2 project to state-controlled group Gazprom, the Telegraph reports. Anglo American, the mining conglomerate that is being stalked by Xstrata, its Swiss-based rival, is in talks with Dubai Natural Resources World to co-develop iron ore assets in Brazil. The discussions with the Gulf company, owned by the Emirate of Dubai, come after separate talks with other potential investors, including Chinalco, the Chinese state-owned metals group, although these are not expected to result in a deal, the Times reports.Buoyant capital markets activity underpinned US banks' second-quarter earnings, with a boom in equity and debt issuance helping offset continued losses on toxic assets, bankers and analysts said. With two days to go before the end of the quarter and a fortnight before banks begin reporting results, executives said the strong performance in trading and underwriting in the first quarter was exceeded in the three months to June, the FT reports.Executives from the world's leading oil companies are flying to Baghdad today to place bids in the first auction of production contracts for Iraqi oil since the 2003 invasion. Drawn by the promise of rich pickings from the world's third-largest oil reserves, the multinationals, including BP, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil, will find themselves at the centre of a political row over the legality of the contract auction, the Times reports.Google has vowed to heal the rift with newspaper publishers facing up to the digital age, rejecting claims that it is an "internet vampire". The internet search portal's comments came after Les Hinton, the chief executive of The Wall Street Journal, last week criticised Google for "sucking the blood" out of the newspaper business, reports the Independent.