Tuesday newspaper round-up: General Motors, FSA, Diageo

21st Jul 2009 06:13

General Motors, the American carmaker, was believed to be weighing up three bids for its European business last night as it emerged that the German Government had demanded that Sberbank, the state-owned Russian lender, has a reduced role in any offer.Yesterday afternoon Magna, the Canadian car parts supplier, and RHJ International, a Belgian industrial group, both submitted binding, formal offers for GM Europe, the business that controls Vauxhall in the UK and Opel on the Continent, the Times reports.Banks that offer employment contracts with bonuses guaranteed for more than a year could be in breach of new rules and risk heavy penalties, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has warned. In a letter to 45 chief executives within the financial services industry, Hector Sants, the FSA chief executive, said any guarantees made after March 18 may have to be revoked if companies are to comply with the City regulator's new code, the Times reports.British banks should disclose the names and salaries of all staff earning more than £200,000 to improve transparency in the financial system, the Liberal Democrats have proposed. The recommendation, which would also require the individuals to reveal whether they are domiciled in the UK for tax purposes, was one of a series of regulatory reforms outlined by Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, yesterday, the Telegraph reports.China's sovereign wealth fund has acquired 1.1% of spirits group Diageo, giving it a stake worth £221m ($365m), in a sign of its emerging strategy to spread its investments over different global markets and asset classes. The move by China Investment Corp, which manages $200bn of the country's $2,132bn in foreign exchange reserves, makes the fund the UK-based groups' ninth-largest investor, the FT reports.Some of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies are reaping billions of dollars in extra revenue amid global concern about the spread of swine flu. Analysts expect to see a boost in sales from GlaxoSmithKline, Roche and Sanofi-Aventis when the companies report first-half earnings lifted by government contracts for flu vaccines and antiviral medicines, the FT reports.Yell, the debt-laden directories group, is drawing up proposals to extend its debt maturities and amend covenant terms ahead of a meeting with its lenders.The publisher of the Yellow Pages, which is to report its first-quarter results on Thursday, is not currently considering a debt-for-equity swap, the FT reports.The dangerous state of the public finances was laid bare by the reports, which showed that the Government's tax take plummeted by £32bn last year. Figures from HM Revenue & Customs showed income tax, national insurance, VAT, stamp duty and corporation tax fell by £21bn, while other debts and legal liabilities had cut income by a further £10bn, the Times reports.Friends Provident has rejected the enhanced takeover proposal unveiled by Resolution, entrepreneur Clive Cowdery's investment vehicle, dubbing it "totally inappropriate" on corporate governance grounds. After meeting Resolution representatives yesterday, management of the life assurance group said its concerns were "so fundamental" that any progress in talks was unlikely until they were addressed, the Telegraph writes.Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay lent the company behind The Daily Telegraph £40m last year to tide the business over after it ran up a loss of £33m during 2008. The short-term loan is the third time that the owners of the Telegraph have had to provide finance to the newspaper group since they acquired the daily newspaper and its Sunday sister title in the summer of 2004, the Times reports.Iceland is preparing to hand over large stakes in its three nationalised banks to their international creditors along with a 270bn krona (£1.3bn) injection of capital to revive the country's broken financial system. The country's three biggest banks, Glitnir, Landsbanki and Kaupthing, failed last October owing $60bn (£36bn) to foreign institutions and savers, the Telegraph reports.Nissan is to build plants in the UK and Portugal to make lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles in one of the biggest investments by a carmaker since the industry entered the downturn last year. The Japanese carmaker said it would invest more than £200m ($330m) in a battery production facility employing 350 people in Sunderland, north-east England, and a €250m ($355m) factory employing 200 in Portugal, where it is studying several possible sites, the FT reports.In a blow to official attempts to boost the supply of lending to British businesses, the Bank of England said yesterday that the supply of credit to companies contracted in May for a second month in a row. The Bank also released estimates on the growth in the money supply (M4) and the trends of lending across the economy that, economists said, also cast doubt on the efficacy of the Bank's policy of "quantitative easing", known colloquially as "printing money", the Independent reports.