Tuesday newspaper round-up: Alistair Darling, Royal Bank of Scotland, Gilts

8th Dec 2009 06:31

Top investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, are being lobbied by the government to contribute tens of millions of pounds to a new lending initiative for credit-starved small businesses.Executives from global financial institutions were called to a meeting on Monday with Alistair Darling, the chancellor, and Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, to discuss their participation in the scheme, which Mr Darling was keen to announce as part of his pre-Budget report on Wednesday, the FT reports.British taxpayers are insuring almost £170bn of Royal Bank of Scotland's toxic assets outside of Britain, Treasury documents released yesterday show. The bank, soon to be 84 per cent taxpayer-owned, is putting £282bn of assets into the Government's giant insurance scheme. Of that sum, less than £114.5bn is in Britain. About £75bn of assets are in continental Europe, many from RBS's acquisition of ABN Amro. The rest are in the United States and elsewhere, including the Cayman Islands, the Times reports. Gilt traders will be in line for bumper bonuses this year after generating big profits from the £200bn quantitative easing (QE) scheme approved by the Treasury. The Debt Management Office, which manages the sale of Government bonds, has increased the amount of gilts it has sold this year - £173bn since the beginning of the financial year in April, compared with £93bn during the same period last year, the Telegraph reports.Retailers' hopes of a bumper Christmas were dampened yesterday as figures revealed sales in November fell a long way short of expectations. Underlying UK retail sales, excluding new space, grew at an annual rate of 1.8 per cent last month, a marked decrease on October's 3.8 per cent growth, said the joint KPMG British Retail Consortium (BRC) survey. The figures were particularly disappointing given that November last year was a particularly bad month, the Independent reports.Meanwhile, fears that high street activity in December could remain muted were exacerbated as the number of shoppers hitting the high street fell by nearly 5 per cent last weekend. Figures from Experian Footfall, which monitors high street shoppers, showed the footfall across the UK was 4.6 per cent lower on Saturday than on the comparable Saturday last year, with a 5.1 per cent drop on Sunday, the Times reports.Fears over the solvency of Greece reached a new level on Monday night as Standard & Poors put the country's debt on notice for an imminent downgrade. The agency placed the country on credit watch negative, meaning it is likely to lose its A- rating within months. The country already has the lowest credit rating in the eurozone, but has come under greater scrutiny amid fears that its newly-elected government may avoid imposing significant cuts on the public finances, the Telegraph writes. Energy suppliers are making more money from household customers, with margins doubling in the past year, Ofgem disclosed yesterday. The industry regulator said gross margins, which include costs such as marketing and IT as well as profits, rose to £210 per dual-fuel customer in November, up from £160 in August. In its quarterly energy report, Ofgem added that the figure would rise by a further £70 in the next six months unless suppliers cut their prices, the Independent reports.