Thursday newspaper round-up: StanChart, Oil prices, City Link...

8th Jan 2015 06:43

Banking group Standard Chartered has exited its global equities business, the Financial Times writes, "in an abrupt move that underscores the bank's efforts to cut costs and refocus its business, and is also axing another 2,000 jobs in its retail division".Brent crude on Wednesday dropped below $50 a barrel for the first time since the the Great Recession in 2009, writes The Guardian. Oil had fallen as low as $49.66, before recovering to $51 after US stockpile data was not as bad as feared.According to analysts at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, if Brent crude falls to $40 a barrel in the near term, Saudi Arabia or non-OPEC producers could be forced to cut production, writes The Telegraph.Collapsed parcel delivery firm City Link is to shed a further 230 jobs as the administrator closes its remaining 51 depots by the end of next week, according to The Guardian.One of the architects of the Beats headphone range has said that he was duped out of millions of dollars after the $3.2bn purchase of the company by Apple, writes The Times.The Times, citing research by Savills, has reported that annual house-price growth in London's most sought-after boroughs was 2.6% last year, while growth in the UK's top regional markets was 3.2%.The Eurozone has officially slipped into deflation, The Telegraph reported, further raising the prospect of a multi-billion euro intervention by the region's central bank to try and prop up the sluggish economy. Prices in the euro area in December were 0.2% lower than a year earlier, far short of the European Central Bank's target of just under 25 inflation and worse than forecasts of a 0.1%.Sainsbury's has declared itself ready to go into battle with a rejuvenated Tesco after its Christmas proved better than expected, The Times wrote. The supermarket's like-for-like sales fell by 1.7 per cent in the final three months of the year, making it the chain's worst Christmas for more than a decade - but, against a backdrop of a price war with Aldi and Lidl, the numbers comfortably beat City forecasts of a fall of 3.2 per cent.