Wednesday newspaper round-up: Sainsbury, SSE, Ukraine crisis

26th Mar 2014 06:53

For Clive Black, the Head of Research at Shore Capital, there is now a much more convincing case for the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) to make a more strategic investment in troubled supermarket operator Sainsbury. After all, the grocer has an attractive annual cash return backed by assets. That would come after that country´s investment authority walked away from 10.6bn pounds - 600p a share bid - for the company, blaming the exit on the downturn in credit markets, which made funding such an approach more expensive, according to The Daily Mail.Utility outfit SSE has announced a freeze on electricity and gas prices for households until 2016. The measure will be partly funded via a cost reduction programme, including 500 redundancies, which will generate £100m in savings. In parallel, and in what will come as a major blow for the government, the company has decided to scale back plans to build offshore wind farms as it does not have "sufficient confidence in the viability of the wider offshore wind sector," The Daily Telegraph says. The Ukraine crisis has led the Department of Energy and Climate Change to reconsider its plans to allow Russia to construct nuclear power plants in the UK. Just last September, Westminster signed a nuclear co-operation deal with Russia´s state-owned Rosatom which would pave the way for it to enter the UK civil nuclear market, according to The Daily Telegraph. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is about to slap Santander UK with a multimillion pound fine for offering poor investment advice to some clients. That follows a year-long investigation into the industry which found that in multiple instances high street banks and building societies were failing to correctly identify clients´ needs in terms of the level of risk which they were willing to assume and the appropriateness of the financial securities offered to them, The Daily Telegraph says. The Scottish government´s roadmap for splitting up the UK makes no sense even if its prized oil and gas revenues are taken into account, the CBI believes. Consequently, says the business lobby group, there is no credible plan for cutting Scotland´s net deficit following a break-up. That is made worse by the fact that it will be more volatile, but just as large, as that of the rest of the country. It would also saddle people and businesses with extra red tape, The Times reports. Business confidence has recovered to its best levels since before the start of the recession, courtesy of factors including a bounceback in exports, the latest economic survey from the Bank of Scotland showed. Better trading at companies since the start of the year will be buttressed by a recovery in investment levels, The Scotsman writes. Centrica has undertaken its first foray into Ireland by purchasing the supply division of Bord Gais for 1.1bn euros. Most importantly, the firm is looking to replicate its integrated model of owning power stations and a supply business in the Republic of Ireland. The acquisition target has 56% of the gas supply market in Ireland. Also, the two private equity groups involved in the transaction will make take on Bord Gáis's business in Northern Ireland and its wind farms in the Republic, The Times says. AB