Thursday newspaper round-up: RBS, Flotations, ITV

27th Feb 2014 06:59

Political pressure is growing on George Osborne to rein in pay at Royal Bank of Scotland as the taxpayer-controlled bank prepares to grant more than 500m pounds of bonuses while reporting an annual loss of as much as 8bn pounds and sacking thousands of staff. The bank's total bonus pay-out will be lower than last year's 679m pounds but Labour MPs signalled the political storm ahead as they questioned RBS's plans to pay large bonuses at all when its already huge losses are mounting further. - Financial TimesLeading City fund managers say that they are being forced to make snap decisions about whether to buy shares in flotations without being given access to critical information. Institutional investors have said that investment banks running the recent wave of initial public offerings have been refusing to release the prospectus ? which includes risk factors and details of court cases or related transactions, and can run to hundreds of pages ? until the very last minute. - The TimesITV has ruled itself out of any race to buy its rival Channel 5. Adam Crozier, its chief executive, said yesterday that while the broadcaster was on the acquisitions trail for production companies in both Britain and the United States, it was "not looking" at Richard Desmond's Channel 5, which makes very little of its own content. Bids for Channel 5, which comes with a £700m price tag, are due this morning. BSkyB and Discovery have discussed a bid and Saban Capital, the investment firm founded by Haim Saban, the Israeli billionaire who created the Power Rangers franchise, is also understood to be interested. - The TimesVladimir Putin placed Russian armed forces on alert on Wednesday in a show of strength over the political direction of Ukraine that rattled financial markets and brought a swift warning from the US. Mr Putin ordered a surprise drill by forces in western Russia, including areas bordering Ukraine. Sergei Shoigu, defence minister, insisted the exercise was "largely unrelated to events in Ukraine", but John Kerry, US secretary of state, nevertheless made clear that any sign of intervention would not be acceptable to Washington. - Financial TimesThe Co-op yesterday revealed it is to sell its farming and will look at offers for its pharmacy chain as part of a planned shake-up that is likely to ¬impact on thousands of jobs. It is part of a revamp of the group which is expected to post record annual losses of £2bn next month and has been rocked by a number of scandals. - ScotsmanQantas, Australia's struggling national airline, will lay off 5,000 workers, sell its older gas-guzzling Boeing Jumbo jets and ditch routes including flights to Singapore. In a widely anticipated announcement, Alan Joyce, the Qantas CEO, said that the airline had posted an underlying first-half loss of A$252m - the largest loss since the airline's public flotation 20 years ago. The jobs cuts ? more than a seventh of Qantas's 34,000 strong work force ? will occur across the board and will include a savage cut of 1,500 in the airline's management and back office staffing. - The TimesAngela Merkel will set out the case for Britain to stay in the European Union in her address to both Houses of Parliament today, while warning that there are limits to the powers that can be won back from Brussels. Mrs Merkel will say that Germany and Britain have a common interest in reforming the single market, in a speech designed to be supportive of David Cameron's desire to stay in the EU after renegotiating the UK's relationship with it. - The Times AB