Monday paper round-up: British Airways, Goldman Sachs, Election

19th Apr 2010 06:41

British Airways challenged the blanket ban on flights as its chief executive took to the skies to test the effects of volcanic ash on its aircraft.Willie Walsh, the airline's chief executive, joined four crew in a three-hour test flight from London, over the Atlantic, to Cardiff. Today the airline will study the effects of the flight on engines before concluding whether it is safe to fly or not. The chaos caused by the eruption of an Icelandic volcano, now entering its fifth day, has left more than one million British travellers stranded abroad, the Telegraph reports.Goldman Sachs faces the prospect of investigations in the UK and Germany after Gordon Brown said he was "shocked" at the "moral bankruptcy" alleged against the bank. The Prime Minister called for a "special investigation" into Goldman's activities. It came as the bank prepares to pay out £3.5bn in bonuses and announce first-quarter profits of almost $4bn (£2.6bn) this week, in the face of a US investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over securities fraud, the Telegraph reports.Lawyers in the United States were predicting a wave of legal action last night in the wake of the $1bn fraud charge brought against Goldman Sachs by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney-general, said that he had begun a review of the case. "A key question is whether this is an isolated incident or part of a pattern of investment banks colluding with hedge funds to purposely tank securities they created and sold to unwitting investors," the Times reports.A clear election victory by either Labour or the Conservatives is needed to sustain the appetite for gilts among the world's biggest investors, according to a Financial Times survey that highlights market concerns about the increasingly tight opinion polls. Ten leading investment funds, with in total more than $7,000bn (£4,570bn) of assets under management, all told the FT that a hung Parliament, potentially delaying action to tackle the UK's £167bn deficit, was the biggest threat to the market.The head of the UK's largest private hospital group has launched a savage attack on the three main political parties, accusing them of ignoring key health issues in the general election for fear of losing votes. Adrian Fawcett, chief executive of General Healthcare Group (GHG), has accused Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats of constructing a "wall of silence" over the future of health care provision, the Telegraph reports.Corporations must "step up to the plate" and play a central role in getting Britain's economy back in shape, a leading economic forecasting group will say this morning. With wary, debt-ridden consumers unlikely to provide the necessary boost, cash-rich businesses could provide the fillip the economy needs, according to the quarterly prediction by the Ernst & Young ITEM Club. But economic growth will remain "dismal" for the rest of the year, with neither corporate investment nor export-led growth expected to have a significant impact until 2011, it added, the Independent reports.EU Finance ministers meeting in Madrid yesterday failed to agree a deal on a new bank tax, as a row over what the proceeds of any levy should be used for intensified. There is consensus across the 27-member community that banks should face a new charge after a series of state-backed bailouts across the continent cost taxpayers billions of pounds, the Independent reports.Tesco is set to reveal yet another year of record turnover and profits, capping a decade that has seen it nearly treble in size. But rather than look back on ten years of almost unprecedented success, it will look forward ? and overseas ? pointing to its prospects for international growth. The supermarket group is expected to reveal turnover up 7% at £58bn, with profits up 9% at £3.1bn, when it announces its annual results tomorrow, the Times reports.The CBI wants the next government to reform plans for compulsory workplace pensions or risk deterring millions of potential savers with high and complex annual charges. It wants the Treasury to reconsider its proposal to levy an annual "set-up" charge on employees who join Nest, the nationwide company pension that is scheduled to come into effect in stages from 2012. The annual fee, provisionally set at 2% of contributions, will come on top of a 0.3 % annual management fee to the pension provider, the Time reports.The head of Prudential's Asian operations has dismissed fears that a takeover of AIG's regional business by the UK insurer, a long-time rival, will trigger mass defections among its 320,000 sales agents. The Pru is battling to acquire American International Assurance (AIA), owned by AIG, and key defections of its tied sales agents would undermine the ambitious growth projections that underpin the $35.5bn (£23bn) deal, the FT reports.