Tuesday newspaper round-up: BP, RBS, ECB

4th Mar 2014 06:54

The fifth appeals court of New Orleans ruled on Monday that BP will have to restart what the company terms "absurd" payouts to people and firms who were not even negatively impacted by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. BP had argued that a compensation committee had misinterpreted the original agreement reached two years ago with the oil giant. Hence, the company may have to again upwardly revise its estimate of potential legal liabilities, although it still has the option to appeal before the US Supreme Court, the Daily Telegraph writes. RBS came under fire yesterday after official figures showed that the taxpayer-backed lender had withdrawn £2.2bn of credit from small companies over the last three quarters of 2013. That was the largest reduction, followed by Nationwide Building Society, which cut its provision of credit by £1.14bn. For Cathy Jamieson, the Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury "These figures show that the FLS has badly failed Britain's small and medium-sized businesses. Net lending to SMEs is down once again while bonuses at many of the big banks are up this year," writes The Times.Rates of consumer price inflation "way below" the ECB target of 2% are a threat to the Eurozone and could disanchor inflation expectations and "we do not want that", Mario Draghi said on Monday. He further expects the Ukrainian crisis to have a limited impact on the Eurozone due to the small financial and trade linkages between the two regions. The "geopolitical dimensions" of the situation, however, are completely different to what has been seen recently in emerging markets, the Daily Telegraph says. Coffee shop Harris + Hoole, which is half-owned by Tesco is looking to double the number of its establishments and employ twice the amount of staff. The growth drive is to be centred on the south-East of England and will be divided between shops on the high street and concessions within Tesco´s own stores. The need for new personnel will be greater than that implied by the number of new stores as it will also be taking on new hires for "kitchen hubs" which will serve various shops each, The Guardian writes. Former Balfour Beatty Chief Executive Ian Tyler will be appointed today by the Cabinet Office as a Crown Representative for troubled outsourcing firm G4S. The outfit is keen to ensure that it is fit to take new contracts with the government following inquiries into alleged overcharging. That comes as rival Serco has appointed Rachel Lomax, a former deputy Governor at the Bank of England, as a non-executive Director, The Times says. Camra is asking the government to support pubs as the rate of net closures rises again. Over the last nine months of 2013 the number of pubs going under rose to 28 a week from 26 a week, due to tough trading condtions. In particular, Camra is asking for duty in next month´s Budget to be frozen and for curbs on big pub companies, The Times reports. AB