Wednesday newspaper round-up: Korea, Mutuals, De La Rue...

24th Nov 2010 06:40

The divided Korean peninsula appeared to be teetering on the brink of all-out war yesterday after the North fired dozens of shells across the border during military drills by the South. Two South Korean soldiers were killed and 16 other people were reportedly injured.The artillery bombardment - one of the heaviest since the Korean War ended without a peace treaty in 1953 - left parts of Yeonpyeong island in the Yellow Sea, north-west of the capital Seoul, in smoking ruins, the Independent reports.Building societies reacted with concern and surprise yesterday after financial regulators threatened to reverse the freedoms given to them over the past 25 years. Lord Turner, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, told MPs that he would like to see some of the deregulation of the mutual sector reversed. "The biggest mistake we made, and I think this is something we will be returning to in Parliament, was to allow our mutual sector ... to extend beyond the core business of prime residential lending," the Times reports.The former boss of Chloride has been lined up to restore the fortunes of the troubled banknote printer De La Rue. Tim Cobbold has been identified as its new chief executive, but has yet to put pen to paper on a deal to join the Basingstoke-based group, insiders said. Mr Cobbold, 48, led the £1bn sale of Chloride, the secure power systems provider, to Emerson Electric in the summer, the Times reports.The Irish government is poised to take a majority stake in Bank of Ireland, which will leave the Republic without a single significant lender independent of state control.The increased government stake is under discussion as part of an €85bn rescue package from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, which aims to restore confidence in Ireland's troubled economy and its ailing banking industry, the FT reports.Shares closed sharply down in Portugal and Spain last night and the euro slipped further against the dollar as fears grew that Europe's sovereign debt panic would lead to the next bailout centred on the Iberian Peninsula. A general strike is planned in Portugal today in protest at austerity measures, which would mean that pensions are frozen and public sector pay is cut by an average of 5% in an attempt to reduce the deficit from 7.3% to 4.6% of GDP next year, the Times reports.SAC Capital, the giant hedge fund run by billionaire Steven Cohen, told its investors that it has received an "extraordinarily broad" subpoena, as the US authorities widened their investigation into suspected insider trading on Wall Street. Mr Cohen's firm was the highest-profile among several to disclosure requests for information yesterday, a day after the FBI raided three hedge funds. More raids are expected in the coming days, and prosecutors are aiming to make arrests and lay charges within weeks, the Independent reports.America's economic recovery will be weaker than feared next year and do little to bring down unemployment until at least 2013, according to new forecasts from the Federal Reserve.The world's biggest economy will grow between 3% and 3.6%, less than the Fed's June forecast of 3.5% to 4.2% In turn, unemployment, currently 9.6%, will only edge lower to between 8.9% and 9.1% next year. In June, the central bank had forecast it would dip below 9% in 2011, the Telegraph reports.SAP, Europe's biggest software company, has been ordered by a US court to pay Oracle $1.3bn (£820m) in the biggest-ever award for copyright infringement. The result of the 11-day trial in Oakland, California, dwarfed the $40m that SAP said it was liable for. Oracle took legal action alleging that TomorrowNow (TN), a US-based division of SAP that it acquired in 2005 and closed in 2008, wrongfully downloaded hundreds of thousands of Oracle's files, the Telegraph reports.JPMorgan Chase is close to axing plans to build a £1.5bn European headquarters in Canary Wharf, opting instead for the former UK premises of Lehman Brothers. The bank's strategy for London has been the subject of intense speculation amid concerns that the abandonment of the 1.9m?sq?ft Riverside South project would reflect broader industry unease about UK regulatory and tax policy in the wake of the financial crisis, the FT reports.Capital Shopping Centres is close to agreeing the UK's largest property transaction with the purchase of the £1.6bn Trafford Centre in a deal that would make John Whittaker, the northern billionaire, its largest shareholder. CSC, the largest retail property company in the UK, is in advanced talks to buy the 1.5m sq ft shopping centre near Manchester that was built by Peel Holdings, the family property company run by Mr Whittaker, the Times reports.