Monday newspaper round-up: Royal Bank of Scotland, British Airways, House prices

1st Feb 2010 06:38

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has been forced back to the negotiating table in the $2bn (£1.3bn) sale of RBS Sempra, its commodities trading unit, after its preferred buyer balked at President Obama's clampdown on proprietary trading.JP Morgan, which was named two weeks ago as the exclusive bidder for RBS's 51% stake in RBS Sempra, has ruled out the purchase of the North American assets in the wake of Mr Obama's ruling, the Times reports.British house prices are set to rise 6% this year, the Centre for Economics and Business Research has said, revising its forecast of two to four percent growth made only a month ago. The strength of the upturn has taken many economists by surprise, and while the CEBR was one of the few forecasters to anticipate that 2009 would see house prices return to growth it did not predict the rate of mortgage lending already seen this year, the Telegraph reports. Aerospace executives and the US government reacted with concern to a Chinese threat to impose sanctions on American groups involved in a $6.4bn arms deal with Taiwan.Giovanni Bisignani, director-general of the International Air Transport Association, the global airline industry body, called for fresh talks between Beijing and Washington to avert a crisis over the arms package, the FT reports. The planned global tie-up between British Airways, American Airlines and Iberia has moved closer to securing a regulatory green light in Europe. Both BA and the European Commission, Europe's top antitrust watchdog, confirmed on Sunday that competition officials had started consulting with rival airlines, such as Virgin Atlantic, about the concessions that the three carriers had offered to address potential anti-competitive implications of the deal, the FT reports.The world economy could face "catastrophe" unless leaders find common ground in their plans to overhaul regulation of the financial sector, the European Central Bank president, Jean-Claude Trichet, has warned. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Trichet said that the financial system needed an internationally consistent set of regulations, or could face far more damaging crises in the future, the Telegraph reports.The Government is drawing up plans for a wholesale reform of Britain's energy markets that could wind back the clock on 12 years of deregulation. In an interview with The Times, Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said that Britain's existing, highly liberalised market regime, introduced under Labour in 1998, was failing to deliver the investment needed to cut UK carbon emissions by more than a third by 2020, the Times reports.The Independent adds that the government will today set out the details of the "feed-in tariff" scheme designed to encourage small-scale, green electricity generation, concluding years of intensive lobbying from the renewables industry. Subsidies for home or community use of wind turbines or solar panels, for example, will start in April. But the details of how much they will be worth, and what will be eligible, have been the subject of much debate.An organised ring of "cash for crash" insurance fraudsters has been ordered to pay its victims almost £400,000 after a landmark case in the High Court. The 57-member ring, which includes a nurse and a bank worker and is based in and around Manchester, staged 30 "slam on" accidents, where a driver brakes suddenly at a roundabout or junction causing the car behind to crash into them. The fraudsters then claimed for the cost of repair or replacement of their vehicles on the innocent drivers' insurance, the Times reports.The extent to which the recession has cut into high-value research and development jobs in the pharmaceutical industry will be laid bare this week as job losses in the industry climb to 12,000. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the British drugs group, will announce plans on Thursday for further restructuring with the loss of 4,000 jobs, of which nearly half will be in GSK's research and development centres, the Times reports.The recent upturn in the commercial-property market is not based on fundamental improvements and is likely to prove unsustainable, according to research published today. Although December's 3%price rise was the sharpest monthly increase in more than two decades, the boost signalled only that investors were calling the bottom of the market, and will not translate into a long term recovery, says consultancy Ernst & Young's ITEM Club, the Times reports.UK property and casualty insurers face a €15bn ($21bn, £13bn) jump in capital requirements under the latest version of proposed European solvency rules due to come into force in 2012, according to a new study. The Solvency II rules, currently being finalised ahead of a full test of their effects this summer, have so far prompted the strongest reaction from UK life assurers who feared they might have to raise £30bn-£70bn in fresh capital, the FT reports.Neil Barofsky, the special inspector-general overseeing the US government's financial rescue efforts, is to probe allegations of insider trading among bank executives and their associates. Eight of the largest banks in the US received between $2bn and $25bn in October 2008 under a programme to prop up the financial system led by Hank Paulson, then Treasury secretary, the FT reports.