Thursday's newspaper round-up: ITV, economy, Goldman Sachs

6th Aug 2009 06:30

ITV is set to sell Friends Reunited to DC Thomson, the Dundee-based publisher, for £25m - less than four years after the broadcaster bought the social network for £170m, reports the FT.The worst of the recession is over, The National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) has said. NIESR said it hoped May would prove to be the trough of economic activity. "Output is stabilising and, in the absence of further shocks, the period of sharp recession is over," writes the Telegraph.A remarkable turnaround in the housing market and the wider economy appears to be under way. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) is now predicting that property prices will end 2009 higher than they started, and the Halifax house price index registered a rise of 1.1 per cent in July, a slight upward trend confirmed in other data from the Nationwide and the department of Communities and Local Government, reports the Independent.Goldman Sachs traders made more than $100m in revenues on each of a record 46 days during the second quarter, while losing money on just two days, the bank said on Wednesday, in a filing that underscored the strength of its trading operations, reports the FT.The leaked loan book of Kaupthing bank claims that Joe Lewis, the billionaire investor, and Daniel Levy, the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur, pledged part of their majority stake in the football club as collateral for a loan, writes the Telegraph.O2 is bracing itself for the possibility of losing its exclusive deal to sell Apple's iPhone in the UK, in what would be a significant setback for the UK's leading mobile phone operator, says the FT.Harvey Golub, a respected former head of American Express, has emerged as the frontrunner to become chairman of AIG, in a move that would provide the stricken insurer with a robust defender against congressional critics, says the FT.The senior partner of Deloitte, one of Britain's so-called "Big Four" accountancy firms and the auditor of Royal Bank of Scotland, has collected an annual pay package worth £5.2m, according to the Telegraph.Teenagers are turning their back on social networks including Facebook, according to an official report by Ofcom, which also found that Britons are more likely to cut spending on their holidays and nights out than on their mobile phones or television subscriptions, in the Independent.