Tuesday newspaper round-up: ENRC, London riots, Chicken Tonight, China accuses the US, Barclays

9th Aug 2011 06:07

One of the FTSE's biggest companies has initiated three external investigations into alleged corruption and wrongdoing within the past four years, The Times has discovered. Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC), a £10bn copper miner, is understood to have hired investigators for the most recent inquiry in March amid claims of financial irregularities at its Kazakhstan operations.The weekend's riots and looting may have serious repercussions on long-term efforts to regenerate some of London's struggling high streets, business leaders have warned. As businesses begin to tally the cost of stolen goods and damaged stores the British Retail Consortium (BRC) has warned that many of the shops affected may never reopen, while other firms may rethink their investment plans for areas such as Tottenham and Wood Green, the Guardian reports.There will be no more Chicken Tonight at Unilever after the consumer goods group sold its unloved sauce brands to Symington's, the Leeds-based owner of Golden Wonder and Campbell's. The Anglo-Dutch group, which has hundreds of global brands from TRESemmé shampoo to Slim-Fast foods, decided to review the slowing British market for its Chicken Tonight and Ragu sauces last October, according to the Times.China has blamed America's cripplingly expensive military campaigns for the current debt crisis and called for the world's leading superpower to rethink its global "domineering". "Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States, as the world's sole superpower, has relied on its powerful military to meddle everywhere in international affairs, advancing hegemony, and paying no heed to whether the economy can support this," said an editorial on the official Xinhua news wire, China's second fierce attack on the US in three days, the Telegraph reports.The chief executive of Barclays has renewed speculation over the bank's future in the UK if the British government pushes ahead with sweeping reforms of the industry. Speaking to investors last week about proposals to force British banks to build a wall around their core high-street operations, Bob Diamond said: "It's no longer a question of whether Barclays wants to stay in the UK but whether the UK wants Barclays," the Financial Times reports.The prospects for a fresh wave of tech initial public offerings in the second half of this year have receded with the stock market sell-off of recent days, technology investors and analysts warned. However, a handful of leading companies that dominate their particular niches and are benefiting from fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour, such as social games company Zynga and daily deals site Groupon, should still find their way to Wall Street unblocked, they said, according to the Financial Times. Retailers have warned of a "spending paralysis" on the high street if confidence is not revived in the wake of the global slowdown and sovereign debt crisis, after the sector delivered anaemic sales growth in July. While underlying sales rose by 0.6 per cent last month, after a fall by the same amount in June, the increase was largely driven by hefty discounting in the fashion and grocery sectors, according to a survey by the British Retail Consortium and KPMG, the Independent reports.Songbird Estates, the property group behind Canary Wharf, said on Monday it had signed a deal that will finally realise the full vision outlined in the 1988 masterplan for the Isle of Dogs development. Songbird will build a 20-storey tower at 25 Churchill Place, the last building to be realised in a plan encompassing more than 30 blocks and 15 million square feet of space, says the Guardian.Gold hit a new record high of $1,719 today as a fresh rush for the safe haven followed the US credit downgrade. A trading high of $1,719.3 per ounce for spot gold was hit at 5.50pm as investors ploughed more money into bullion amid another day of volatility on the markets, the Daily Mail reports.