Sunday paper round-up: Virgin Money, BG, Tesco

4th Apr 2010 19:45

Wilbur Ross, the billionaire Wall Street turnround expert, is backing Sir Richard Branson's attempts to conquer British high street banking.Ross, 72, who made his name buying coal, steel and telecoms companies, is understood to be paying £100m for a 21% stake in Virgin Money, Branson's finance operation. He has also pledged to back Virgin's £2bn bid for the network of 318 branches being sold by Royal Bank of Scotland, the Sunday Times reports. Frank Chapman, chief executive of BG, the oil and gas group, took home £28m in cash, shares and pension contributions last year, making him one of the best-paid executives in the FTSE 100. Disclosure of the bumper package ? which does not include another £19.3m in shares and options he has received but not cashed in ? will fuel the debate raging over levels of executive pay, reports the Sunday Times.Guillaume Rambourg, the star trader suspended last week from Gartmore, the fund manager, used the Bloomberg instant messaging system to "direct" trades for nearly a year. Jeff Meyer, Gartmore's chief executive, said Rambourg circumvented a company rule introduced on May 15 last year. Staff were given training sessions and asked to take a test to make sure they understood that they could no longer direct trades, the Sunday Times reports.China's highly fragmented steel industry is poised for a major programme of consolidation that will create a strong top 10 of players in the world's largest market for the metal, the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal has predicted. Mr Mittal, chairman and chief executive of ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel company, and the wealthiest man in Europe, makes the forecast today in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph.A powerful cross-party Commission ordered to recommend financial reform to the next Government is set to propose a radical break-up of the City's biggest banks. David Davis, the Conservative MP and chairman of the Future of Banking Commission, told The Sunday Telegraph: "The report is not yet written but I agree with the principle of breaking up the banks, either in terms of size, or by utility. "We have to do this even if the rest of the world won't follow too. And if bad banks leave the UK as a result, so what?"The Government's £73bn nuclear decommissioning programme is to be accelerated with a radical repackaging of its private sector contracts. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) had planned up to five nuclear plant clean-up contracts, which would be let sequentially and take about two years each to select a preferred bidder. This has now been cut by two, with the later three projects combined into a single £13bn-plus outsourcing contract. The large value of this contract will also ensure greater private sector interest, the Sunday Independent reports. Savers lost out on £18bn of returns last year due to the Bank of England's emergency interest rate cuts, analysis by the Office for National Statistics reveals. Borrowers, however, benefited from a £26bn windfall, thanks to rock-bottom base rates of 0.5%, the Observer reports.Large shareholders will be pitted against each other this week in a row over oil giant BP's involvement with tar sands in a battle that is set to dominate this year's round of company annual meetings. A special resolution has been filed by 143 shareholders for BP's annual meeting on 15 April, demanding the company provide a full report by next year about the risks of its planned tar sands development in Canada, reports the Observer.Tesco has revealed for the first time that it ultimately expects to gain a 10% share of Britain's financial services market, making it roughly as big as Abbey and more than half the size of Barclays. The supermarket giant, which already sells insurance and some savings products, plans to launch mortgage deals by the end of this year, with a current account to follow in 2011, the Mail on Sunday reports.