Wednesday newspaper round-up: Marks & Spencer, BP, Oil prices...

10th Nov 2010 06:39

Marc Bolland outlined a plan to steer Marks & Spencer out of the path of the big supermarket groups yesterday as he unveiled his three-year blueprint for the retailer.The Dutchman who took over as chief executive in May delivered his vision for restoring M&S to greatness in rigorous detail, focusing on improving the core British business. The former boss of Wm Morrison, Britain's fourth-largest grocer, said that he would distance M&S from the "crowded, low-margin" supermarket-dominated part of the food market, the Times reports.BP increased the risk of a blowout on its doomed Macondo well by making rushed and confused decisions in the final hours before the April 20 accident, according to the head of a presidential commission that is investigating the disaster. William Reilly, co-chair of the panel, accused all three companies involved ? BP, the oil services group Halliburton and Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig ? of a culture of complacency that led to the explosion. He described the companies as "laggards" in the industry that made "egregiously bad decisions", the Times reports.Oil prices will rise beyond $200 a barrel as global supplies, strained by rising demand from China, India and other emerging economies, near their peak in 2035, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted yesterday. Ahead of that, the Paris-based IEA's 2010 World Energy Outlook also forecast prices of more than $100 a barrel in 2015. "Production in total does not peak before 2035, though it comes close to doing so," the agency said, reports the Independent.Some senior staff at the Bank of England are uncomfortable with Mervyn King's endorsement of the government's public spending cuts, suggesting he has overstepped the line separating monetary and fiscal policy. People familiar with the monetary policy committee's deliberations have told the Financial Times that Mr King's support for the coalition's aggressive fiscal tightening are not fully shared by all members of the nine-person committee, comprised of bank staff and outside experts. Since being granted independence in 1997, the bank has generally refrained from commenting on fiscal policy, the FT reports.Reduced pension rights and any indications of forced redundancies in the sale of Royal Mail are set to be the flashpoints over which postal workers could strike to prevent the coalition Government's flagship privatisation going through. Speaking after being asked to give evidence to a parliamentary committee of MPs considering the Postal Services Bill, Dave Ward, the post workers' union leader, said that the union would work to block the privatisation, the Times reports.Goldman Sachs has fired its head of European block trading for violating internal policies and procedures, the Financial Times has learnt. Alexandre Harfouche, a London-based managing director, was sacked for failing to make proper disclosures to the bank's compliance department, according to people familiar with the matter, the FT reports.Car insurance premiums will rise by a further 20% if the number of claims continues to gather pace, MPs were told yesterday. The warning followed research by the AA, which found that motor insurance has soared in the past 12 months, with premiums for all age groups up by more than 25% and those for the youngest motorists up by 51%. In evidence to the Commons Transport Select Committee yesterday, insurers blamed the rising costs on uninsured drivers, escalating levels of fraud and third-party companies encouraging drivers to seek payouts, the Times reports.The European Commission's head of Internal Markets - the man in charge of the machinery of financial regulation - has refused a request to explain his reforms to the Treasury Select Committee. Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the influential Parliamentary committee, has revealed that Mr Barnier has declined to appear before MPs. Instead he offered a senior official to answer questions in his place. Mr Tyrie has written an open letter to Mr Barnier's boss, the President of the European Commission, complaining about the snub and demanding that the decision is "reconsidered," reports the Telegaph.Tullett Prebon, the inter-dealer broker run by Terry Smith, has been accused of stealing proprietary pricing data from rival BGC. BGC Capital Markets is seeking "hundred of millions of dollars" of damages following the alleged theft, according to a lawsuit filed in New York on Tuesday. "BGC's proprietary information technology is the foundation on which our business is built. We believe by stealing our technology instead of building its own, Tullett benefited to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars at our expense," said a spokesman for BGC, reports the Telegraph.Primark expects the soaring price of cotton to "erode" some of the uplift in profit margins the discount fashion retailer delivered in its last financial year. The comments by the retailer's owner, Associated British Foods (ABF) - which also operates the Patak's curry pastes, Kingsmill bread and Ryvita snack brands - took the gloss off a stellar performance by Primark for the 53 weeks to 18 September, the Independent reports.Most big Asian banks will be exempted from a global regulatory regime under the latest proposal for the industry from the world's leading economies, which aims to prevent another financial crisis. People briefed on the agenda for the G20 summit, which begins in Seoul on Thursday, said officials had concluded that global regulators should focus on big banks with global businesses, stripping out domestically focused institutions without the reach of the in dustry's cross-border companies, the FT reports.