Thursday newspaper round-up: Carlyle, Barclays, Irish banks

17th Sep 2009 06:39

Carlyle has resumed deliberations about a possible public listing, people familiar with the matter say, underscoring the growing confidence of private equity firms as conditions in the financial markets improve. Any initial public offering by Carlyle would be at least six to nine months away, these people said, and the firm has not reached a decision yet on whether to list its shares. Carlyle said that "nothing substantive" is happening now, according to the FT.Barclays has been accused of "banking by sleight of hand" after creating a new company to take over its most toxic assets and ringfence future losses, says the Telegraph.Five High street banks in Ireland are to be paid £48bn by a state agency to cover their toxic debts in the biggest financial rescue in the country's history. Bonds issued by the National Assets Management Agency (Nama) will provide the struggling banks with £7bn more than the current £41bn value of their toxic debts, writes the Independent.The BBC licence fee should be cut and the corporation's dramatic expansion halted, the Culture Secretary said yesterday. Ben Bradshaw also called for its governing body to be scrapped, reports the Times.Every family in Britain will have to pay an extra £2,840 a year in higher taxes and cuts in public services by 2017 to fix the public finances, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said, according to the Independent.Gordon Brown was on Wednesday accused by the Tories of covering up the state of the public finances, after leaked Treasury papers suggested that soaring debt interest and social security costs could force the biggest spending cuts since the 1970s, says the FT.Eastman Kodak, the American photography group attempting to adapt to the digital age, said it expects to raise as much as $700 million, with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co committing to buy more than half of the notes, writes the Times.French bankers have warned that European financial institutions will be unfairly penalised compared with their US competitors by new capital requirement rules on the agenda at the G20 summit of leading industrial nations this month. Baudouin Prot, the French Banking Federation's chairman and chief executive of BNP Paribas, the country's biggest bank, said the impact would be especially unjust as the financial crisis was caused in large part by failures in the US, reports the FT.Andy Duncan yesterday ended the growing uncertainty over his position as chief executive of Channel 4 by announcing he would quit the group before the end of the year, says the Independent.Union leaders have told British Airways cabin crew to "hold firm" against the airline's attempts to cut their pay and change their contracts. In a message to BA's 14,000 cabin crew, the British Airlines Stewards and Stewardesses Association (BASSA), the union, said that this was was not the time to cut a deal, according to the Times.The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, told bankers to repent over their mistakes, as he fears the City is getting back to "business as normal", writes the Telegraph.The founders of Skype have filed a lawsuit against its parent company eBay and the investment group attempting to buy the online telephony service, as the battle over its future continues to escalate, reports the Guardian.