Sunday newspaper round-up: BP, Lloyds, Daily Mail

11th Jul 2010 11:03

BP is in exclusive talks to sell up to $12bn (£8bn) of assets to Apache Corporation, an American rival, including a big stake in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in North America, the Sunday Times reports.Apache approached BP with the plan a few weeks ago. Negotiations are under way over the structure of the agreement and what other assets could be included. Meanwhile, oil industry sources said that Exxon, the world's largest oil company, has been given a green light by the American government to "take a look" at a bid for BP, the Sunday Times adds.BP engineers will spend the weekend trying to arrest the flow of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico by lowering a replacement cap over the ruptured well. If successful, the scheme could stem the spill in time for David Cameron's first visit to Washington, which is expected to be dominated by discussion of the environmental disaster, the Observer reports.The Treasury is planning to publish its radical proposals for the City's new "twin peaks" regulatory structure, which hands banking supervision back to the Bank of England, over the next two weeks. Mark Hoban, the Financial Secretary who is charged with putting flesh on the architecture of the new structure, is drawing together final submissions from the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority, which is to be broken up, the Sunday Independent reports.The disastrous legacy of HBOS's forays into private equity is revealed this weekend with the disclosure of huge losses at its remaining investment vehicle, Uberior, now part of Lloyds Banking Group. Just a week after Lloyds finally offloaded the majority of Bank of Scotland's Integrated Finance division for £480m after enormous write-downs, accounts just filed for the remainder of its private equity businesses showed Uberior made a loss of £289m in 2009, up from £80m the year before, the Mail on Sunday reports.The chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is to lay out a blueprint to make the watchdog more independent after its figures on the UK economy were accused of being too pro-Government. Sir Alan Budd will say that major changes should be made to the OBR to ensure that the public and the markets can fully trust its work, the Sunday Telegraph reports.England's disastrous World Cup effort has resulted in £100m of merchandise being either returned or unsold. Stockshifters.com, which claims to have 35% of the market for trading surplus stock, has estimated the figure after finding a huge number of England shirts, footballs and umbrellas for sale. Its chief executive, Harvey Sinclair, said: "Think of the shirts that were purchased as retailers aimed to capitalise on the hopes of the nation. Now retailers need to get something back for their outlay and quickly, even if the Football Association hasn't," the Sunday Independent reports.A controversial American private equity firm is in talks this weekend to rescue a building society with 180,000 members. JC Flowers is investing £50m to support Kent Reliance in return for a 49% stake in a new holding company. The private equity firm is planning to use the investment as a launchpad for up to 10 similar deals, consolidating struggling societies in the sector, the Sunday Times reports.HSBC's chairman, Stephen Green, has revealed serious concerns about the future strength of the economically vital banking sector which is under threat from a wave of new regulations. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Green, 61, warned that the likely structure of the proposed Basel III accord on banking risks "overly gold-plating" investment banking capital requirements.Richard Pym, chairman of Bradford & Bingley, is to be reported to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) over allegations that he attempted artificially to inflate the bank's share price before its collapse in September 2008. An action group of former shareholders claims that Pym fed investors misleading information about the bank's financial health, the Sunday Times reports.Britain's biggest banks will warn the chancellor that up to £1tn is poised to be drained from the financial system, hampering economic recovery and depriving households and businesses of loans and other forms of credit. The bank bosses wrote to George Osborne shortly after he took office are to meet him to express their concerns about the impact of regulatory changes which require banks to hold bigger capital cushions, the Observer reports.Daily Mail and General Trust has drawn up detailed plans to jettison its local newspaper arm, Northcliffe, owner of the Leicester Mercury and Bristol Evening Post. Talks have been held to offload Northcliffe into Johnston Press or Trinity Mirror, with DMGT swapping the division for a stake in the enlarged group. A combination with either rival would create a clear market leader in local media and act as a test case for the further relaxation of media ownership rules, the Sunday Times reports.Institutional investors have started to shun next week's $500m London listing of Fairview Energy, the North Sea oil explorer and producer, due to fears over a loan and future liabilities. But Mark McAllister, the Fairview chief executive, believes the company has properly accounted for the decommissioning of the key Dunlin field cluster 500km from Aberdeen, the Sunday Independent reports.Hedge funds and other financial speculators are threatening the good order of the chocolate market. Cocoa prices have reached their highest levels for 33 years, increasing 150% in the last 18 months, and financial speculators are being accused of inflating prices to make a financial profit, the Sunday Independent reports.