Tuesday newspaper round-up: UK recession, HSBC, Porsche

26th Jan 2010 06:31

Britain will be declared to have emerged from the deepest recession for a generation today with political leaders more divided than ever about how to sustain recovery. On the eve of figures expected to show that the economy grew by 0.4%in the last three months of last year, Gordon Brown and David Cameron ensured that the timing of spending cuts will dominate the coming election campaign, the Times reports.Company collapses will hit record levels this year and stay high in 2011, R3, the insolvency body, has warned. The official end of recession, expected to be confirmed by government figures published on Tuesday, would therefore be a false dawn for many businesses. "The country went into recession sharply but will come out of it through a long, slow drag," said Peter Sargent, chairman of R3, the FT reports.Stephen Green, chairman of HSBC, has launched an attack on "inflated" bankers' bonuses as Gordon Brown claimed growing support for an international levy on banks. Mr Green, who is also chairman of the British Bankers' Association, said bank bonus structures had been "distorted" and predicted that future pay-outs will be lower, the Telegraph reports.Proposals for a global transaction tax on banks are "gaining traction", Gordon Brown claimed yesterday, as Britain sought to push its reform agenda with other G7 economies ahead of rival American plans for regulatory overhaul. The US is the main obstacle to a so-called "Tobin tax", which remains popular across Europe as a way of building up a fund to ensure that banks no longer have to call on taxpayers' cash if they run into problems, the Independent reports.Jim O'Neill, Goldman Sachs' star economist and a lifelong Manchester United fan, has declared his opposition to the club's recent bond issue - despite the investment bank making millions in fees from the fund raising. "There's too much leverage going on with Manchester United," said Mr O'Neill, who appeared to have been caught off-guard when quizzed on the bond issue by Zijing Wu, a Bloomberg reporter, at the end of an eight minute interview on China's currency policy, the Telegraph reports.China plans to cash in on the soaring copper price by using its substantial reserves to snap up global assets while prices are low. Lu Youqing, vice-president of Aluminium Corp of China (Chinalco), said that the state-owned group was studying worldwide copper resources to identify the best investment opportunities, the Telegraph reports.The Church of England has suffered a £40m loss on a disastrous investment in a New York apartment complex that was acquired by a consortium in 2006 for $5.4bn ? the biggest single residential property deal in the United States. A spokesman for the Church Commissioners said that it had written off the entire value of its investment and added that the commissioners were "looking carefully" at the lessons to be learnt, the Times reports. American hedge fund managers sued Porsche and two of its former top managers yesterday for more than $1bn (£620m), in what may be one of the biggest damages claims ever received by a German company. Four fund managers ? Elliott Associates, Glenhill Capital Management, Glenview Capital Management and Perry Capital ? accused the sports car manufacturer, its former chief executive and its former chief financial officer of repeatedly lying about their intention to take over Volkswagen, the Times reports.Jabre Capital, the Geneva-based hedge fund run by the former GLG Partners star trader Philippe Jabre, is to shut its flagship fund to new money from investors in an attempt to ensure its returns are not curtailed by its size. The fund - the $2bn (£1.2bn) Jabcap Multi Strategy - is to "hard close" for two years when it reaches $2.5bn in size, the FT reports.Metalloinvest, Russia's biggest iron ore miner, has revived plans for a London stock market listing that could value the group at as much as $20bn (£12.3bn) in what would be the third large City flotation planned by Russian oligarchs for this year. The company, which is half owned by Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek billionaire, has formally mandated Deutsche Bank to run the offering with Credit Suisse, according to people familiar with the discussions, the FT reports.