Tuesday newspaper round-up: Anglo American, Thomson Reuters, RBS

23rd Jun 2009 06:16

Anglo American, the global mining group, flatly rejected Xstrata's proposed all-share "merger of equals", putting itself at odds with several big investors as it labelled the offer from its Anglo-Swiss rival "totally unacceptable" reports the FT.Anglo's blunt rejection of the deal will put pressure on Xstrata either to sweeten its proposal by offering cash or take its case to Anglo's biggest shareholders. A near-£10m incentive package for Stephen Hester, chief executive of the taxpayer-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland, was condemned last night by politicians and unions. George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, said: "Stephen Hester may be the right man to lead RBS, but this is the wrong type of pay deal. It is a one-way bet which smells of the old-style City," the Times reports.A summer gas war is brewing in Ukraine, threatening another cut-off of Russian gas supplies into Europe and a worsening of the cash squeeze on Gazprom, Russia's biggest company. Eleventh-hour talks are under way between the European Union, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to secure a stop-gap loan of $4 billion (£2.44 billion) to pay for Ukraine's gas needs, the Times reports.Thomson Reuters - the media conglomerate spawned by Paul Julius Reuter's fledgling attempts to transmit share prices between stock exchanges in London and Paris - is to delist from the London Stock Exchange after almost 150 years. The FTSE100 listed company, which was formed from the merger of Reuters and Thomson in 2007 and is dual-listed in Toronto, is to cease trading on the British bourse in August as a result of the discount in the price of its London shares, the Telegraph reports.Growing pessimism about the prospects for a global economic recovery sent stock and commodity prices tumbling on Monday while new data showed that leading US corporate executives were cashing out of their share holdings at a rapid pace. US government bond yields followed equity prices lower, confounding analysts who had expected that Treasury rates would rise this week as the federal government auctioned off a record $104bn of debt, the FT reports.The City of London has warned that new European regulations could ride roughshod over the interests of the UK, where the financial services sector employs more than 1m people and generates billions of pounds in income. In an outspoken attack on the accord signed last week to create an EU regulator, the City of London Corporation said the Brussels' legislation posed a dangerous risk to the success of the economy, the Telegraph reports.Virgin Atlantic has placed the biggest order for Airbus A330 series aircraft since a similar Air France plane crashed three weeks ago over the Atlantic, with the loss of 228 lives, the Telegraph reports.ESPN, the Walt Disney-owned sports broadcaster, has snapped up two packages of Premier League rights containing a total of 46 matches, which were formerly held by Setanta. The rights, sold for an undisclosed sum, are for next season as well as a package of 23 matches per season from 2010/11 to 2012/13, which came up for grabs after cash-strapped Setanta Sports was stripped of the rights after failing to meet payments to the Premier League, the Times reports. The slump in Britain's troubled commercial property sector may finally be bottoming out, the chief executive of the property group Hammerson claimed yesterday. However, John Richards warned that only good quality assets would see a rebound, reports the Independent.