Sunday newspaper round-up: Sports Direct, BHS, Barclays, Smiths, Cobham

1st May 2016 18:03

(ShareCast News) - Sports Direct boss Mike Ashley has offered to buy collapsed retailer BHS, saving its entire store estate and thousands of jobs. Although the tycoon was unable to agree a deal before administrators were called in last Monday, Ashley confirmed to the Sunday Telegraph: "Any continuing interest that we have in BHS would be on the basis that we would anticipate that there would not be any job losses, including jobs at head office, and that all stores would remain open."Tina Green, the wife of businessman Sir Philip Green, has joined her husband in being called to face MPs on two select committees to answer questions about the collapse of BHS, the Observer reported. Lady Green, a trustee of the company, will join her husband in being questioned by the work and pensions committee about where hundreds of millions of pounds went from BHS and how its £571m pension deficit will affect Britain's Pension Protection Fund, a rescue scheme funded by contributions from other pension pots.Backed by the State Bank of India and Macquarie Capital, Sanjeev Gupta's Liberty House has submitted one of the first bids for the Tata Steel operations based around Port Talbot. The Sunday Telegraph said it understood that Macquarie had agreed to support Liberty's bid with funding, and that also on the deal ticket were several ex-Tata executives, with Deloitte and Grant Thornton as advisers.Barclays' mains shareholders are losing patience with the bank and many want it to sell its investment bank. The board want to avoid a showdown at the annual general meeting this week, the Sunday Times reported.Elsewhere in banking, Royal Bank of Scotland has begun to rid itself of the RBS brand in a bid to escape the memories of its 2008 bailout. The Sunday Times said the state-owned lender will remove the RBS branding from more than 500 branches in England, Scotland and Wales.HSBC is likely this week set to reveal a sizeable fall in profits as the Asian economic slowdown and crunch in investment banking crunches its earnings. A sustained squeeze on profits could even threaten the bank behemoth's progressive dividend policy, with analysts forecasting pre-tax profit crashing more than 40% to $4.2bn (£2.9bn) in the first quarter, the Sunday Telegraph noted.The North Sea sector could be hit with the first wave of workers strikes in a generation, the Sunday Telegraph said, as union members of John Wood Group are predicted to reject tougher contract terms that include longer hours and lower pay. Tensions have risen as members of Unite weighing whether to reject the offer and strike, which could impact projects across the North Sea including decommissioning work on the giant Brent oilfield operated by oil giant Shell.Randgold Resources chief executive Mark Bristow is bullish on the medium-term outlook for the yellow metal but warned the Sunday Telegraph that "the next six months will not be a comfortable place to be in; it's going to be volatile as people try and work things out". This includes mergers between the junior players, Bristow predicts, while the FTSE giant remains frustrated with "razzmatazz M&A" and will instead go back to its roots as an explorer, scouring Africa for mineral rights.Tesco will be hoping to get a reasonable price for its loss making Giraffe restaurant chain as a queue of interested parties has formed, including Casual Dining Group, the private equity-run owner of Bella Italia and Café Rouge, and entrepreneur Luke Johnson who originally sold the chain for £49m in 2013. The Sunday Times cited City sources who claimed the newspaper's Animal Spirits columnist Johnson was planning a daring raid to buy back Giraffe at a discount, but will have to compete with several private equity firms said to be circling the auction.The 90-10 joint venture between Stagecoach and Virgin Trains to run the UK east coat mainline is underperforming badly, the Sunday Times said, and putting in grave danger the pledge to pay the government £3.3bn in premiums over the eight years of the franchise. Stagecoach's east coast bid and promise of such large premiums was based on compounding interest, but the dip in traffic partly due to the oil and gas slowdown in Scotland, will make it very hard to catch up in future years.Only a fortnight after announcing another, £493m acquisition, Smiths Group is in talks to buy Pfizer's £1.4bn medical devices arm. The FTSE 250 engineer has held early-stage talks about buying its pumps and devices unit, according to City sources cited by the Sunday Times.Pressure is increasing on the UK care-home sector after major provider Care UK was downgraded by Moody's. The ratings agency cut its rating on bonds issued by the independent provider of social care, and notched up its verdict on Care UK's probability of default rating.Continuing the recent theme of shareholder meeting bust-ups, Reckitt Benckiser is braced for an investor backlash this week over chief executive Rakesh Kapoor's £23m salary and bonus package. The Sunday Times said the rebellion was expected to be much larger than last year's protest, when 17.2% of investors voted against Kapoor's £13m package.Cobham has invoked shareholder ire after the Sunday Times said it had emerged that the defence company sacked a director of its troubled wireless division days before ignoring the issue in its annual results and eight weeks before revealing to the market that the problem would require a £500m emergency rights issue. The revelation will heap more pressure on Cobham's chief executive Bob Murphy and chairman John Devaney, with investors furious they were not told about the problems sooner, the Sunday Times said.Former Northern Rock chief Adam Applegarth has made a dramatic comeback in the UK mortgage market as a key adviser to US private equity group Pine Brook as it this year became new challenger bank Belmont Green's lead investor. Belmont Green was incorporated last year and plans to enter the mortgage market as a "challenger brand", offering loans through brokers, the Sunday Telegraph revealed.A dip in UK house price data and a slowdown in the crucial service sector are this week predicted to supply the latest evidence that the economy is faltering ahead of June's EU referendum, the Sunday Times said. The Halifax house price index is forecast to show a 0.4% month-on-month drop, while research firm Markit is also set to show weaker expansion in the construction and service sectors.The Big Six energy companies are consulting with their lawyers on whether to fight the competition regulator's claims that households have been overcharged by £1.2bn a year. With the conclusion of the Competition & Markets Authority's investigation into the energy market in June, including imposing remedies on the industry to create a truly competitive market, energy companies maintain the calculations the CMA is employing and proposed remedies are flawed.Chinese manufacturing data for April disappointed on Sunday, raising concerns about whether the world's second-largest economy can continue its recent rally, reported the Observer. China's official purchasing managers' index (PMI) was 50.1 in April, surprisingly down from March's 50.2 as a slight increase in growth to 50.3 had been forecast.Growth in private sector output increased in the three months to April, according to the latest Growth Indicator survey from the Confederation of British Industry. A balance of 10% of surveyed firms reported a rise in output in the quarter to April, up from 2% in March, with the CBI attributing this to robust manufacturing output and a rally in consumer services.Broker Panmure Gordon has lined up wealth management veteran Andrew Adcock as its new chairman, the Sunday Times said. The managing partner of private wealth manager Brompton Asset Management and director of Foxtons estate agents will oversee an overhaul of the struggling 140-year-old business.Deputy Bank of England governor Sir Jon Cunliffe has suggested a buy-to-let (BTL) property bubble could be inflating and that "one needs to look very carefully at whether lenders' underwriting standards are slipping". BTL loans has grown by an average of 6% per year since 2008, he told the Sunday Telegraph, accelerating to 11.5% last year, with the proportion of mortgages going into the BTL marker rising from 8.5% in 2007 to nearly 15% now.Analysts predicting a slide of up to 20% in the price of new-build flats this year have base their forecasts on too small a data set, according to Capital & Counties boss Ian Hawksworth. While the surge in off-plan purchases by overseas buyers has reverted to their lower historical norm, he told the Sunday Times that not all areas of prime London property developments should be judged the same, though the contagion of 'Nine Elms' disease was worrying.In another move that will raise eyebrows about the shifting sands of London's property market, Apple has set its sights on taking the entire 470,000 of office space in the redeveloped Battersea power station for its new British headquarters. The Sunday Times said the deal with the site's Malaysian-backed developer and its agent, Knight Frank, would shift the centre of gravity of London's burgeoning tech scene as it became the first major tech name to move south of the river.The UK's lack of childcare is "an act of economic self-harm" that is crippling businesses and, the Sunday Times reported, should be seen as a "core business infrastructure", just like energy, transport or broadband, the British Chambers of Commerce has warned. The BCC noted that firms across the country lose thousands of productive, motivated members of staff in their 20s and 30s every day, when the answer to this was staring the government in the face: "high-quality, affordable childcare".A European court is likely to enforce stricter controls on electronic cigarettes, banning advertising of ecigs on television, radio and in print. Unless there is a successful challenge by manufacturers at the European Court of Justice on Wednesday, the European Tobacco Products Directive will come into force later this month, also bringing more rigorous laws on flavours and the strength of nicotine liquids used.The finance director of Anglo American's De Beers diamond business has emerged as the most likely replacement for outgoing finance chief René Médori. Nimesh Patel, 38, who was appointed to the De Beers job in December, is one of a trio of internal candidates for the job.