Wednesday newspaper round-up: LSE, National Express, GlaxoSmithKline...

9th Feb 2011 06:42

The London Stock Exchange is in late-stage merger talks with the group behind the Toronto stock exchange. A deal is expected to be announced as early as this week. An agreement to merge with Canada's TMX Group would create the seventh-biggest trading platform in the world, valued at about £4.3 bn.The deal marks the first strategic move by Xavier Rolet, the London Stock Exchange chief executive, whose authority has been questioned after a systems failure and delays to the introduction of new trading software, the Times reports.Speculation was growing in Madrid last night that National Express's largest shareholder may be working with a New York hedge fund to engineer a sale or break-up of the British transport company. Elliott International has built a stake of 16.3% in National Express worth more than £200 million. That is just short of the near-17% that the Cosmen family owns as a legacy of selling its Spanish bus and coach business to National Express in the middle of the last decade, the Times reports.The European Budget Commissioner has hit out at Franco-German-led reforms of the eurozone, saying they risk creating a "two-speed Europe" that closes the door on non-euro nations. In an outspoken interview yesterday, Janusz Lewandowski called on core euro members to involve other European Union countries in deliberations aimed at strengthening the governance of the single currency. "Developments are being watched with some nervousness in Warsaw and other capitals," he told The Times on a visit to London. "We need a discussion on how to avoid a two-speed Europe."George Osborne was accused of "moving the tax goalposts" by banks and of introducing a "damp squib" by Labour after increasing a levy on bank profits to raise £2.5bn this year. The Chancellor also announced that the levy would be made a permanent tax, in a surprise statement this morning. The British Bankers' Association, the voice of the industry, said "constant chopping and changing" of the tax regime "risks making the UK a less attractive place for businesses to operate", the Telegraph reports. The US crackdown on alleged insider trading on Wall Street has escalated with criminal fraud charges filed against four hedge fund employees, including two who had worked as portfolio managers at SAC Capital, a $12bn hedge fund group. The hedge fund employees allegedly obtained secret information about six companies from corporate insiders and consultants with Primary Global Research, a California expert network research firm, and made millions of dollars in trading profits, the FT reports. The Confederation of British Industry today becomes the latest organisation to downgrade its growth forecast for the British economy, threatening the credibility of the Chancellor's predictions, the Government's prospects of reducing the fiscal deficit and higher unemployment as the economy struggles to rebalance. Having forecast growth in the national income of 2% in 2011 as recently as last December, the CBI now says that it will be down to 1.8%. It also trimmed its forecast for growth in 2012, from 2.4% to 2.3%, the Independent reports. Beazley, the Lloyd's of London insurer, said yesterday it was on the hunt for deals as bankers eye a boom in mergers and acquisitions among companies that do business at the 320-year-old insurance market. It follows Monday's announcement by another Lloyd's insurer, Chaucer, that it was talking to rivals and financial bidders about a possible takeover, the Independent reports.Susan Shabangu, South Africa's respected mines minister, has dismissed talk of nationalisation of the country's mining sector as "not an option" and "not current policy" following calls for the state to seize assets by a radical wing of the African National Congress (ANC). This morning, Cynthia Carroll, chief executive of mining giant Anglo American, warned the South African government that nationalising its mines would be a "road to ruin", the Telegraph reports.The World Health Organisation (WHO) has called for further investigations after more than 12 countries reported cases of narcolepsy in children and adolescents using GlaxoSmithKline's swine flu vaccine. The WHO statement on Tuesday follows a study in Finland that suggested children were nine times more likely to suffer the disorder after taking Pandemrix, the Telegraph reports. Anglo Irish Bank, the lender most exposed to Ireland's property crash and which was nationalised in 2009, said it expected to report a record loss of €17.6bn (£15bn) for 2010. In a trading update on Tuesday, the bank said this would include a loss of €11.5bn on impaired loans transferred to the National Asset Management Agency, the body set up to take over loans where the developers that borrowed are either bankrupt or cannot repay, the FT reports.