Wednesday newspaper round-up: Royal Bank of Scotand, Barclays, Mitchells & Butlers

2nd Dec 2009 06:32

Alistair Darling was heading for a clash with the City's biggest institutional shareholders last night after the Treasury seized control of the bonus pool at Royal Bank of Scotland.Institutional investors raised concerns about RBS's ability to compete with rivals after the Treasury demanded the right of veto over both the size and terms of bonus payments for thousands of its bankers. In an unprecedented political intervention, the Treasury has demanded the right to dictate both the "quantum and shape" of bonuses at RBS for 2009, the Times reports.General Motors, the struggling US carmaker, claimed another high-profile victim last night when Fritz Henderson, its president and chief executive, was abruptly ousted by the company's board. Ed Whitacre, who was named GM's chairman by the Obama Administration in June, is to take over as chief executive while a replacement president and chief executive is sought, the Times reports.Barclays Bank will book a gain close to £1bn more than expected on the sale of its asset management arm to BlackRock thanks to a 62% rise in the US fund manager's shares since the deal was struck. The UK bank on Tuesday completed the $15.2bn (£9.1bn) sale of Barclays Global Investors to BlackRock, which becomes the world's biggest asset manager with more than $3,000bn in assets, the FT reports.Lenders to Dubai World have asked lawyers to assess their rights over the state-owned company's trophy overseas assets, which include P&O Ferries and the QE2 cruise liner.A group of bondholders in Nakheel, Dubai World's property subsidiary, appointed Ashurst, the London law firm, last Friday to advise them on their options after moves by Dubai to restructure Dubai World's debt, the Times reports.De Beers, the world's largest diamond miner, is set to launch a rights issue to raise up to $1bn (£601m). After a difficult year that saw diamond prices collapse and De Beers profits fall by 99 per cent, the group faces a $1.5bn debt refinancing in March, out of total net debt of $4bn, the Independent reports. Yorkshire Building Society is in advanced talks to buy Chelsea, its weaker rival. Chelsea's members are unlikely to receive a windfall from the deal. Britain's fifth-biggest society has been struggling for months under the weight of mounting losses and spiralling costs of funding. A deal would reinforce Yorkshire's position as the second-biggest building society, behind Nationwide. The enlarged organisation would have 2.7m members and £34bn in assets, the Times reports.Homeowners must be charged penalty taxes on their properties if the UK is to avoid a future housing crash, according to one of the Bank of England's policymakers. Adam Posen, a member of the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee, said that the Government should consider slapping extra taxes on British properties, suggesting that in future homeowners should have to pay an extra charge if prices rise too fast. In comments which will cause extreme disquiet in the Treasury, he even indicated that this may mean imposing capital gains taxes on first homes and raising stamp duty, the Telegraph reports.BSkyB has attacked proposals to allow BT to charge its rivals more for access to the telephone network in order to help plug its £9.4bn pension fund deficit. A Sky spokesman said: "Forcing customers to bail out BT for the mismanagement of its pension fund would be plain wrong. This would be a reward for failure that discourages BT from managing down its deficit and works against Ofcom's practice of calculating pricing based on efficient forward-looking operating models, not historical expenditure," he added, reports the Telegraph.Logica, the computing group, is the latest British employer to close its final-salary pension scheme, stripping 470 of its longest-serving employees of the opportunity to continue clocking up guaranteed retirement benefits. Logica said that it planned to close the defined-benefit scheme to new accrual from the second quarter of next year, offering the casualties the chance to join an inferior defined contribution scheme, the Times reports. Mitchells & Butlers, the pub and restaurant operator, launched a fresh assault on rebel shareholders yesterday by effectively sacking the four non-executive directors appointed at the behest of the dissidents. The unprecedented move came a day after the Toby Carvery and All Bar One operator reported Joe Lewis, the Bahamas-based billionaire, and the horseracing tycoons JP McManus and John Magnier to the Takeover Panel, accusing them of banding together to try to seize control of both the board and the company, the Times reports. The Chancellor needs to find an additional £15bn over the medium term if he is to meet government borrowing targets set out in the Budget, a respected group of economists has warned. The Ernst & Young ITEM Club urged Alistair Darling to take the opportunity presented by next week's pre-Budget Report to set out a clear strategy for putting the nation's finances "back on a more sustainable footing," the Telegraph reports.Governments can best help the news industry save itself by getting out of its way, Rupert Murdoch said on Tuesday, as he used a Washington podium to call for a relaxation of US media ownership rules. Unsuccessful publishers should be allowed to fail just as "a carmaker who makes cars no one wants to buy should fail," the News Corp chairman and chief executive said, adding that government assistance "subsidises the failures and penalises the successes," the FT reports.