Wednesday newspaper round-up: Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking, BBC

25th Nov 2009 06:27

Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS were given a secret £61.6bn in bridging loans last year on top of the £500bn of support that the banking sector received from the taxpayer, the Governor of the Bank of England disclosed yesterday. MPs expressed astonishment when Mervyn King told them about the emergency funding, which indicated that the two banks were in far greater peril than first thought. The Government has since indicated that the whole sector was within hours of collapse, the Times reports.The Government is sharpening the axe for Britain's £4bn nuclear clean-up budget and drawing up plans for big spending cuts at contaminated sites including Sellafield and Dounreay, The Times has learnt. The Treasury has begun a sweeping review of spending by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the quango that over the past four years is understood to have spent about £1bn of taxpayers' money annually on cleaning up at Britain's 20 contaminated nuclear sites.The BBC has been holding discussions with City advisers about floating part of BBC Worldwide, its commercial arm, in response to pressure from the government and commercial rivals to dilute its media market power. As Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, told the Financial Times on Tuesday that he had "an open mind" about the future ownership of Worldwide, people with knowledge of the matter said a partial flotation was one of several possible outcomes, including no change to its status.China has stepped up efforts to halt the explosive growth in credit, ordering the country's five top banks to raise capital over coming weeks or face lending sanctions. The move amounts to monetary tightening in China's state-run banking system. The news triggered a sell-off on Asian stock markets and raised broader concerns about the strength of the global rally. The Shenzen index fell by 4.5% on Wednesday, the Telegraph reports.Investors are snapping up newly built flats in northern cities at substantial discounts, clearing out the unsold stock of several leading housebuilders. Many such buyers are accountants, doctors and solicitors who are becoming landlords for the first time, weary of the low rates of interest from deposit accounts and attracted by the returns available from lettings, the Times writes.Gas will be at the heart of Royal Dutch Shell's production strategy ahead of oil as the world attempts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, according to the energy group's new chief executive, Peter Voser. Delivering an update on Shell's two flagship gas projects in Qatar, which are costing the group $21bn (£12.6bn), Mr Voser admitted that one - a liquiefied natural gas (LNG) plant - would overrun by about 10 months, the Telegraph reports.Tesco is taking a subsidiary of Mike Ashley's Sports Direct to court in a bizarre case involving half a dozen bicycles and almost £1m. Britain's biggest retailer has launched a legal action against Universal Cycles amid claims that a member of the supermarket chain's finance team mistakenly paid £984,000 for six bicycles, the Telegraph reports.Meanwhile, Keith Hellawell, the former government drugs tsar who resigned over the declassification of cannabis, has been appointed non-executive chairman of Sports Direct, ending the sportswear group's two-and-a-half-year search for a new boss, the Independent reports.Facebook has followed Google's lead and introduced a dual-class stock structure, the clearest sign yet that the world's most popular social networking site is preparing for an eventual public offering. In doing so, Mark Zuckerberg, the company's 25-year-old chief executive, looks to be solidifying his long-term grip on the site he founded five years ago that has become the fourth most popular destination on the web, the FT reports.Business investment tumbled for the fifth straight quarter between July and September, official data showed yesterday, raising concerns about the sustainability of the economic recovery. The total money invested by businesses, in items ranging from new machinery to computer systems, was 3% lower in the third quarter than the second and down 21.7% year-on-year, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed, the Times reports.The future of Saab was thrown into doubt on Tuesday after a consortium led by Sweden's Koenigsegg pulled out of talks to buy General Motors' premium car brand. Koenigsegg blamed the collapse on delays in closing the deal after months of negotiations with the Swedish government over financial support. It said: "Unfortunately, delays in closing this acquisition have resulted in risks and uncertainties that prevent us from successfully implementing the new Saab Automobile business plan", the FT reports. Tivo is re-entering the UK market through a partnership with Virgin Media, the cable operator, six years after the US group gave up selling its digital video recorders in Britain. The deal, in which Tivo will provide software rather than branded boxes, is a rebuff to Project Canvas, the joint venture led by the BBC, ITV and BT to set the standard for bringing internet video to Britain's television sets, the FT reports.Edmund Truell's Pension Corp has reached a deal to repair the £450m-plus deficit in the pension scheme of Telent, the rump of the former GEC Marconi business, which the specialist pensions buy-out firm took over in early 2008, the FT reports.