Thursday newspaper round-up: Tesco, Burger King, BHP Billiton

2nd Sep 2010 06:03

Tesco, the UK's largest supermarket, is one of 10 bidders in the £650m auction for the south-east Asian assets of French rival Carrefour. Other bidders in the first round of bids for the stores are thought to include Casino, another French retailer, Aeon, the vast Japanese supermarket group, and Dairy Farm, the Singapore retail group, the Telegraph says.The New York Times reported that 3G Capital Management was close to taking Burger King private after four unhappy years as a listed company. Reports of the talks sent Burger King's shares up by $2.41, or nearly 15 per cent, to close at $18.86 in New York after months in the doldrums. The company declined to comment, according to the Times.Investment banks are jostling for mandates to advise the Chinese Government on how to respond to BHP Billiton's $39 billion hostile bid for Potash Corporation. It is understood that HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, UBS and Deutsche Bank have all held exploratory talks with various arms of the Chinese Government and state-backed entities such as Sinochem, says the Times.The Independent reports that Chinese regulators are considering an investigation into BHP Billiton's proposed takeover of Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan. According to local media reports, the Chinese monopolies watchdog is weighing up inquiries into both BHP's takeover bid and into the proposed merger between two Russian potash suppliers, Uralkali and Silvinit.Four of the country's leading energy suppliers face fines running into tens of millions of pounds in a new investigation over the mis-selling of household gas and electricity contracts. EDF Energy, npower, ScottishPower and Scottish and Southern Energy ? which trades as Southern Electric ? are being investigated by Ofgem, the industry regulator, less than a year after they were told to clean up the act of their door-to-door sales and call centre operatives, reports the Times.Troubled oil giant BP has confirmed massive spending on advertising since the Deepwater Horizon disaster and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In a letter to US Congresswoman Kathy Castor, the House Energy and Commerce Committee disclosed that BP spent $93m (£60m) - or $5m a week - on advertising between April and July, triple the amount spent during the corresponding period last year, the Telegraph reports.Meanwhile, the Independent reports that European companies, including Tesco, are facing criticism from a leading human rights organisation for allegedly exploiting weak labour laws in the US and bullying employees to prevent them from joining unions. Human Rights Watch says European multinationals talk nicely about labour relations at home, but pay scant regard to them overseas.Former Lehman Brothers boss Dick Fuld delivered a defiant defence of his management of the defunct Wall Street bank today, telling an official inquiry that the firm's 2008 bankruptcy was down to false rumours about a solvency crisis, uncontrollable market forces and a refusal by the US government to come to the rescue, the Guardian reports.