Sunday newspaper round-up: RBS, Lloyds, Cadbury

1st Nov 2009 14:40

Britain's banks face one of the most crucial weeks in their history with sell-off plans for Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland assets to be finalised, just as the financial regulator begins scrutinising City bonuses.Alistair Darling is expected to say on Tuesday that Lloyds will not be entering the Government's toxic asset-protection scheme, after successfully gaining support for a £21bn capital-raising with City investors, including a discounted £13bn rights issue. Meanwhile, the Royal Bank of Scotland's chief executive, Stephen Hester, is believed to have continued negotiations with Treasury officials this weekend over its participation in the Government's insurance scheme, says the Independent on Sunday.The Sunday Times adds that Darling is preparing to plough billions more of taxpayers' money into RBS to take the government stake in the bank from 70% to as high as 84%. A Treasury announcement this week will confirm RBS is signing up to a controversial deal to pump £270 billion of problematic loans into a state-backed insurance scheme.The Sunday Telegraph writes that RBS is to defend its ownership of the American banking firm, Citizens Financial Group, as it fights a rearguard action against European Union plans to cut the banking giant back. Sources close to Stephen Hester, RBS chief executive, said that it was a "red line" issue for him as the group gave RBS significant presence in the American retail banking sector.Irene Rosenfeld, the chief executive of Kraft, is putting the finishing touches to a £10.5 billion hostile bid for Cadbury that will be tabled in the next 10 days. Kraft will publish its third-quarter figures on Tuesday but a bid is unlikely to be tabled until the end of this week, ahead of the November 9 deadline imposed by the Takeover Panel, reports the Sunday Times.Vale, the Brazilian mining giant, is believed to be eyeing up Copebras, the $1.5bn-valued fertiliser business owned by FTSE-100 giant Anglo American, according to the Independent on Sunday.British Airways will this week report an unprecedented multi-million pound loss for its key summer trading months, as plans for a strike by thousands of cabin crew staff threatens to deepen the airline's woes, says the Sunday Telegraph.US regulators failed to catch Bernard Madoff's huge fraud in 2006 because they asked the wrong questions and did not perform "accounting 101", the financier told the authorities earlier this year, according to documents released yesterday, writes the FT.Alistair Darling is believed to have pencilled in 2 December, rather than the expected November date, for his final pre-Budget report ahead of the election, reports the Independent on Sunday.The era of the oil industry mega merger is over, according to the chief executive of BP. Tony Hayward said that there is "no industrial logic at all" to the type of big-ticket takeovers that transformed the industry a decade ago, says the Sunday Times.Ian Livingston is half-way through a crucial 12 months at BT. Before long, he has to show that he has cleared up the shambles left behind by Ben Verwaayen, his predecessor as chief executive, and move the company on. Otherwise, the plain-speaking Scot is under no illusions that he, too, could be facing the exit, reports the Sunday Times. Stand by for more good news when the telecoms company issues half-year results on November 12, although sales are expected to decline this time.Eurostar is set to lose two key British non-executive directors with nearly 30 years' combined experience at the cross-channel train operator as part of a management shake-up. Rob Holden, the chief executive of the proposed Heathrow-to-Essex Crossrail project, and Adele Biss, the former chairman of the British Tourist Authority, will leave early next year, according to the Independent on Sunday.The owner of Wembley Stadium has announced it made a pre-tax loss of £31m last year and said it could default on finance agreements if wealthy patrons fail to renew their season tickets, writes the Sunday Times.The Bank of England has been urged to increase its quantitative easing (QE) programme to a total of £225bn - more than the gross domestic product of Greece, says the Sunday Telegraph.