Thursday newspaper round-up: British Gas v Ofgem, BoE v Starbucks, ECB

12th May 2011 06:06

Britain's top energy suppliers rounded on Ofgem yesterday, claiming that the regulator bore responsibility for eroding consumers' trust in them. The companies are unhappy with the populist tone adopted in the media by Ofgem's chief executive Alistair Buchanan. Phil Bentley, the managing director of British Gas (owned by Centrica), told the cross-party Energy and Climate Change Select Committee yesterday: "The regulator is saying 'we have given [energy suppliers] a left hook and a right hook ? now they are on the canvass', the Times reports.Bank of England policymakers doused talk that speculators are harming the economy by forcing up commodity prices. Charlie Bean, the deputy Governor, and Paul Fisher, the executive director of markets, said prices tend to be underpinned by "fundamentals". They were responding to Starbucks president Howard Schultz who said the price of commodities such as coffee is "not based on supply and demand", the Telegraph reports.The Governor of the Bank of Italy, Mario Draghi, is poised to become the next head of the European Central Bank (ECB) after winning over German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Gaining the support of the eurozone's most powerful political player clears the way for Mr Draghi to succeed France's Jean-Claude Trichet in November, says the Telegraph.Allen & Overy blamed a "flat" commercial legal market for its decision to freeze salaries for junior lawyers yesterday. Pay for newly qualified solicitors at the City law firm will be held at £61,000 while rates for lawyers at other levels of the pay ladder will also remain the same as last year, Britain's fourth-biggest law firm said, according to the Times.A war of words and legal actions has broken out between the Co-operative Group and Haldanes. The fledgling supermarket chain has accused the UK's fifth biggest food retailer of wanting to drive it "out of business" after Haldanes bought more than 20 former Somerfield stores from the Co-op in early 2010, the Independent reports.Google has taken aim at one of the main pillars of Microsoft's business, as it announced that notebook computers running its Chrome OS software instead of Windows will go on sale next month. However, analysts predicted that the company would struggle to find a big market for the first of the new computers, dubbed Chromebooks, the Financial Times reports.Google could face a $500m bill if a US Justice Department investigation finds the internet's most powerful company breaches competition laws. Regulators are examining whether Google unfairly manipulates its search results to favour its own services and rigs its advertising system to drive up prices, the Daily Mail reports.---RG