Sunday newspaper round-up: General Motors, Vauxhall/Opel, BSkyB

31st May 2009 10:25

General Motors, once the largest company in the world, is expected to file for bankruptcy in a New York court tomorrow. Executives and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are spending the weekend finalising details ahead of the historic capitulation that comes after months of talks and billions of dollars of government investment.The filing will come on the heels of an eleventh-hour deal this weekend under which Magna International, the Canadian motor-parts group, agreed to rescue its European operations, which include two British plants employing 5,500 workers, reports the Sunday Times.Magna International will discover that Vauxhall has "played a key role in ensuring the company has avoided insolvency", when it gets access to financial data from General Motors' (GM's) European operations tomorrow, boosting hopes that jobs will be saved at its plants at Ellesmere Port and Luton, adds the Telegraph. A decision on Vauxhall employees' future is unlikely to be made for some time, as Magna is expected to take at least two months to go through the books.Concerns are growing in Whitehall over links between Oleg Deripaska, the billionaire Russian oligarch, and the consortium set to rescue Opel and Vauxhall, the European arms of General Motors, adds the Sunday Independent. GAZ, Mr Deripaska's automotive group, owned the Birmingham van-maker LDV when it nearly collapsed earlier this year, before it was sold to the Malaysian vehicle importer Weststar. GAZ has teamed up with Magna and the Russian bank Sberbank for a takeover of Opel and Vauxhall. GAZ would make Opel vehicles in Russia.CVC Capital Partners has proposed paying just under £2bn for a 30% stake in Royal Mail, ahead of a rival offer from TNT, the Dutch postal group, but far short of the Government's original target, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt. The private equity group, which owns a large stake in the Belgian postal service, has emerged as the favoured bidder among some key Whitehall decision-makers.The sportswear tycoon Mike Ashley is to put Newcastle United football club up for sale with a £100m price tag. Ashley will appoint Keith Harris, chairman of Seymour Pierce, or bankers at NM Rothschild this week with a mandate to achieve a quick sale. His decision comes just days after the club was relegated from the Premier League. The asking price is £34m less than Ashley paid for the club two years ago, reports the Sunday Times.Staff at the Financial Services Authority (FSA) who presided over the near failure of the banking system were last month awarded bonuses of £19.7m - a 40% increase on the previous year. News of their rewards coincides with the disclosure that the FSA was among banking regulators who identified Northern Rock as the weak link in the banking system in 2004 - three years before its collapse. The information also disclosed that 174 of its staff now receive a six-figure salary - and, on average, these FSA executives each received a bonus of £22,485, reports the Sunday Times.An army of Britain's small investors is raising funds to launch a legal campaign against the directors of Lloyds TSB over their decision to rescue HBOS. The UK Shareholders' Association (UKSA) is taking legal advice over the circumstances surrounding the deal, which has already cost Lloyds more than £9bn in bad-debt charges. The activist group has drawn up a mailing list of 1.5m small shareholders in Lloyds that it plans to start targeting in the next few weeks, reports the Sunday Times. A powerful House of Lords committee is poised to deliver a shattering blow to Gordon Brown's reputation this week by launching an attack on the tripartite system of financial regulation. The Economic Affairs Committee will deliver the blow when it publishes its report on banking supervision and regulation, reports the Sunday Telegraph.Tony Ball, the former chief executive of BSkyB, is understood to have held talks with more than 20 of ITV's leading shareholders in an attempt to win their support for a rights issue if he takes the top job at the troubled broadcaster. Sources close to Mr Ball have said that his top priority would be to fix ITV's balance sheet and he would only be willing to become chief executive if he knew shareholders would agree to an immediate cash call, reports the Sunday Telegraph.Tesco, Britain's biggest supermarket group, is backing electric cars. The food retailer is to start providing charging facilities in its car parks for battery-powered vehicles. The new initiative, which will start in London, could be rolled out nationally if it proves a success with customers, reports the Sunday Times. US drug giant Bristol-Myers Squibb is in talks to buy a stake in Elan, the Irish biotech company, in a prelude to a possible multi-billion-pound takeover. The American company is in advanced negotiations over the deal, which would also see it acquire a seat on Elan's board, reports the Sunday Times. One of America's biggest fund management groups has tabled a $5bn (£3.1bn) bid for iShares, a division of Barclays' profitable asset management arm.Vanguard, which is headquartered in Pennsylvania and had about $1trillion under management at the end of last year, is understood to have lodged the offer with Barclays in recent weeks, reports the Sunday Telegraph.National Lottery operator Camelot has raised by 20% the commission it pays retailers on scratchcards in an effort to accelerate sales growth and returns to "good causes", including a contribution to 2012 Olympics funding. Gambling campaign groups, however, have raised concern about the potential link between scratchcards and underage gambling, suggesting it could be an easily accessible "gateway" product to other forms of gaming. It is illegal to sell scratchcards to under 16-year-olds, reports the Observer.Anger from British staff at Vodafone, the London Stock Exchange's fourth- biggest company, has forced the telecom giant's UK management into an embarrassing climb-down over plans to scrap bonuses. Just weeks after the group posted pre-tax profit for the year to the end of March of £4.1bn, Vodafone is paying its UK staff bonuses equal to 2% of their basic salaries. It is not known the total amount this will cost the company, reports the Sunday Independent.