Thursday newspaper round-up: HMV, Cadbury, Tesco

14th Jan 2010 06:12

HMV, the music and book retailer, is in advanced talks with Luminar over a partnership deal that analysts believe could lead ultimately to a takeover of the embattled nightclub operator. The Times understands that the two companies are discussing the possibility of setting up a small number of pilots that would involve HMV stores and Luminar clubs cross-marketing to each others' customers.Hershey is preparing a counter-bid to Kraft's hostile £10.4bn offer for Cadbury, according to people familiar with the matter. The US confectioner has authorised a bid for the UK chocolate maker and a formal offer could be made before the January 23 deadline, they said, according to the FT.Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's last night attacked the Government for giving the green light to the appointment of a "supermarket enforcer" who will police relationships between the country's biggest grocery chains and suppliers to the £130bn industry, writes the Independent.Accounting for the UK's 50 per cent bonus super tax is a "confused mess" and banks still do not know whether they will take the charge in 2009 or 2010, according to several people familiar with the discussions, reports the FT.Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) defrauded an Austrian bank by encouraging it to invest in a £140 million sham financial vehicle created for Enron, the collapsed energy giant, a court heard yesterday, says the Times.BC Partners has become the latest private equity group to pull out of the auction for Matalan, the privately owned discount clothing retailer, stoking concerns that the £1.5bn price tag is too high. Blackstone, the US private equity group, has already abandoned the race to acquire Matalan, put up for auction by John Hargreaves, its founder and controlling stakeholder, according to the FT.The former chief of a construction company that works in dozens of poor countries is to be prosecuted over alleged corruption, in a landmark case likely to be closely watched by other directors facing similar troubles. The Serious Fraud Office plans to charge David Mabey with false accounting and breaching United Nations sanctions on Iraq after his company, Mabey & Johnson, last year admitted both sanctions-busting and bribing foreign officials in six countries, writes the FT.A fresh war of words erupted between Tube Lines and London Underground (LU) yesterday in the ongoing row over how much it should cost to upgrade the capital's creaking Tube system, reports the Independent.Wall Street's top bankers have apologised for their starring role in provoking the global financial crisis as they brace themselves for details of a looming $120bn (£73bn) tax on profits, according to the Telegraph.Britain's worst economic downturn since 1921 is finally over, a leading economic think-tank said yesterday. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) said Britain had contracted by 4.8 per cent in 2009 and described the downturn as "a depression". That contraction is the worst for 90 years, and more severe than in any single year of the Great Depression, says the Independent.A 34 year-old hot-shot has been named chief executive of Travelex, the world's largest foreign exchange bureau, ahead of a potential flotation of the £1bn business. Peter Jackson, a managing director at Lloyds Banking Group and former McKinsey consultant, will become one of the UK's youngest major company bosses when he takes over in the next couple of months, writes the Telegraph.