Tuesday newspaper round-up: Morrisons, executive pay, Northern Ireland

31st May 2011 06:23

Morrisons is aggressively outbidding its rivals to secure new stores, particularly in the southern England, signalling the scale of its ambitions under chief executive Dalton Philips. The Bradford-based grocer is on a mission to grab property for both standard supermarkets and conveniences stores, with its recent acquisitions of sites in Dorking and Croydon cited as examples of how it is splashing the cash, according to sources, reports the Independent.The bosses of Britain's 100 biggest companies have banked huge pay increases despite the economic crisis. The average earnings of chief executives in the FTSE 100 jumped 32% in 2010, and the heads of blue-chip firms such as Marks & Spencer and Tesco took home an average of £3.5m each, according to a report by City consultancies MM&K and Manifest, reports the Daily Mail.Northern Ireland's recession-hit economy will lag behind most of the UK this year, according to a key business survey that is expected to prompt further calls from Belfast politicians for cuts in corporation tax rates to compete with the south. The Northern Bank's quarterly economic forecast predicts that the growth rate for the economy will struggle to reach 1.1% this year compared with a UK average of 1.7%, reports the Guardian.Britain's energy regulator has been accused of misleading consumers when it claims that suppliers are too quick to raise prices and too slow to cut them. Ofgem has come under pressure on the issue after an independent report commissioned by the trade body Energy UK said that the regulator's analysis "cannot be relied upon", calling into question its methodology, reports the Times.The beleaguered care homes operator Southern Cross is cutting its rent by 30% and remains locked in negotiations with its landlords to find a longer-term solution as it struggles to stay afloat. The group, which owns about 750 care homes, said that it would pay nearly a third less rent than it is contractually obliged to for the next four months, according to the Times.Representatives of some of the UK's largest corporate pension schemes are pressing the Take­over Panel to ensure that acquiring companies take account of a target company's retirement plan when making a bid. They want the panel to force bidders to set out in formal documents how an offer will affect a pension scheme and its members, the Financial Times reports.Sovereign control of financial regulation is under threat from European moves to harmonise rule books across member states, the three men at the heart of the future Bank of England have warned. Paul Tucker, the Bank's Deputy Governor for financial stability, and Hector Sants, chief executive of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) who will become Deputy Governor for prudential regulation, told The Telegraph that the UK's proposed regulatory system risks becoming little more than a local police force applying a one-size-fits-all set of European rules. Andrew Bailey, the Bank's chief cashier, who will become Mr Sants' deputy at the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), a subsidiary of the Bank, also said the UK could lose discretion over how it regulates its banks, the paper reports.Argos, the catalogue specialist owned by Home Retail Group, has been forced to reshuffle its top management team for the second time in just over a month. John Douglass, the director of operations at Argos, is to retire and will hand over the reins to Stephen Carson, a senior director at the DIY chain Homebase, which is also owned by Home Retail, according to the Independent.The Government could start selling its 83% stake in Royal Bank of Scotland as early as next year, a senior executive said yesterday. Taxpayers have owned 83 per cent of RBS since a £45bn bailout during the financial crisis but there is intense speculation about when some of the state's holding will be sold off, according to the Daily Express.