Sunday newspaper round-up: NHS reforms, Japanese car firms ...

3rd Apr 2011 18:10

Prime Minister David Cameron is drawing up key changes to the flagship Health and Social Care Bill which will see his reorganisation of the National Health Service (NHS) watered down. As the Sunday Telegraph explains, Cameron´s new approach may see a moderation in the pace at which market forces are brought in to play in the NHS. Some critics have been warning that too fast an implementation might allow private firms to 'cherry-pick' the most profitable areas of healthcare; as the British Medical Association (BMA) said at the start of last month, the reforms were in danger of turning the NHS into "an increasingly tattered safety net" for those with complex illnesses.The repercussions of Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami are reaching British factories, The Observer reports. Honda executives will discuss a range of options, including a temporary closure of the Swindon plant, which employs about 3,000 staff, or a period of reduced output. The plant makes about 165,000 Civics, CR-V compact sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and Jazz super-minis a year, and each car comprises about 20,000 parts, 10% to 15% of which come from Japan. How bad Europe´s debt crisis gets depends largely on Spain, which would be much harder to rescue than smaller economies like Greece. Nestling at the heart of these worries is land, as The Economist points out. Time will tell how right it is, but also of note, the weekly says that even those lenders which have already braced for big losses, such as Santander, may need to set aside more. In an article entitled "City nervous ahead of bank reform report", Margareta Pagano, of The Independent on Sunday, reports that shares in the UK's high street banks are likely to come under pressure again this week as the City digests the Treasury Select Committee's latest proposals for more competition in the sector ahead of next week's interim report from the Independent Commission on Banking. Robin Harding and Shannon Bond, at The Financial Times (FT), write this weekend that the March US jobless figures mark the second consecutive month of strong jobs growth in the United States, which adds to hope that the market has turned the corner almost two years after a deep recession. However, the economists contacted by the FT for this report seem to have signalled something along the lines that while the recovery in the labour market is becoming established, the scars from the recession are still visible. The revamped plans of Russia's biggest producer of thermal coal, the Siberian Coal Energy Company (Suek), for a London listing involve a full trade in shares allowing it to qualify for the elite FTSE-100 index, as The Independent on Sunday explains. National Express's biggest shareholder, the Cosmen family with 20%, is expected to throw its weight behind a US activist investor that is seeking to shake up the transport company's board - and possibly garner support for a break-up, The Observer reports. Analysts said they suspected the move from Elliott was an attempt to bounce management under Dean Finch into merger and acquisition activity, with the most obvious option a tie-up with Stagecoach or First Group. Both merger candidates are understood to be open to an approach. Writing this weekend about Google´s possible lack of focus, The Sunday Times points out that the company´s third largest bet is Chrome, a web browser, which is about to become something much more ambitious ? a whole PC operating system to compete with the likes of Microsoft Windows. The Independent on Sunday says this weekend that top UK lenders have offered a compromise to the Independent Commission on Banking, proposing that banks should consider "ring-fencing" core services to protect the taxpayer in a financial crisis. The Sunday Telegraph wonders whether supermarket giant Tesco might be succumbing to imperial over-reach. After its moves into banking, pet insurance and film production, Tesco adds another string to its bow - second-hand cars. ---ab