Wednesday paper round-up: BAE Systems, Alliance Trust, Microsoft

23rd Dec 2009 06:26

The French Government has bought its first piece of military equipment from Britain in decades and, in the process, overlooked the claims of a French company.In an unprecedented display of European co-operation, the French have ordered 129 armoured vehicles from BAE Systems in a £220m deal. It is believed to be the first big equipment order that the French Armed Forces have placed with a British company in many years. It is certainly BAE's first significant win in the country, the Times reports.The Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) vowed yesterday to launch a legal challenge to the decision by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to reject its so-called super-complaint over anti-competitive practices by the big tenanted pub companies. The organisation said that the OFT's decision was detrimental to the interests of pub-goers and the future of Britain's pubs and it called on consumers to help to fund an appeal "to ensure this vital legal challenge can stand the best chance of success", the Times reports.The contraction of bank lending and the M3 money supply in the US and Europe over recent months has become a serious concern and raises the risk of a slide back into recession, according to one of Britain's most celebrated economists. Professor Charles Goodhart, a former top official at the Bank of England now at the London School of Economics, said policymakers have neglected the flashing danger signal of the monetary data, the Telegraph reports.Fitch Ratings has given its bluntest warning to date that Britain and France risk losing their AAA status unless they map out a clear path to budget discipline over the next year. Highlighting the "unpleasant fiscal arithmetic" facing states across the Old World, Fitch said that none of the "arguably" benchmark AAA states can safely rely on their top rating for much longer, the Telegraph reports.More than 120 MPs plan to quit the Commons at the next general election and pocket pay-offs of up to £64,800 each in what threatens to be the biggest exodus of members for 60 years. Almost a fifth of all sitting MPs have decided to leave parliament without contesting their seats in the poll expected in May, according to UK Polling Report, the website which is monitoring the growing list of departures, the FT reports.Investment trusts have been hit hard in recent weeks following the departure of a leading institution from the sector, forcing many companies to buy back shares. Shares in investment trust companies are now trading at their widest discounts all year, following mass selling by Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which manages the Norwegian government pension fund, the world's second-largest sovereign wealth fund. Alliance Trust bought back shares for the first time on October 14 after NBIM requested a redemption while others, including Foreign & Colonial and Witan, have also been forced to resort to buy-backs,the FT reports.Microsoft on Tuesday lost an appeal against a $290m patent infringement case in its biggest legal setback in an intellectual property case this year. In spite of the upholding of an injunction barring it from using the infringing code in its widely used Word program, Microsoft said it did not expect the decision to disrupt sales of its Office suite of applications, of which Word is part. in favour of i4i, a Canadian software company that had claimed Microsoft's Word 2007 infringed a software patent it was awarded more than 10 years ago, the FT reports.Beatrix Potter's much-loved cast of children's characters, including Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck and Mrs Tiggywinkle, are to make a comeback on British television screens after two decades, thanks to a deal unveiled yesterday by the entertainment company Chorion and the publisher Penguin, the Independent reports.