Friday Papers: Pru fights back with large rise in profits - other news

Financial Times

* Prudential on Thursday announced a big 41% rise in half-year profits and confirmed that the forecast £450m bill for the abortive $30bn-plus takeover attempt of AIA had been cut by more than £70m.

* OTP, Hungary’s biggest bank, on Thursday said that it will make record provisions; it consolidated post-tax profits fell 35% to Ft27.4bn ($125m) in the second quarter year-on-year, missing analysts’ estimates.

* Small businesses are being offered the opportunity to sidestep banks and borrow directly from individual savers using an online marketplace, FundingCircle.com, backed by Jon Moulton; it will allow businesses to seek loans of up to £50,000 at expected interest rates of 6% to 9%.

* Senior Lehman Brothers debtholders might have recovered more than 90 per cent of their investment if regulators had been able to use so-called “bail-in” capital, a new study suggests.

* The head of Barclays’ small business division has firmly refused to sign up to UK lending targets.

* WestLB on Thursday counted the short-term cost of its restructuring efforts in the wake of the financial crisis as it revealed a fall in first-half profits; group pre-tax profit to the end of June fell from €302m to €114m.

* Slovakia’s new government came under fire from its eurozone partners, particularly Germany, on Thursday after its parliament voted overwhelmingly to reject taking part in a European Union aid package for the troubled Greek economy.

* Weather forecasters have warned that the drought that has devastated at least one quarter of Russia’s grain crops this summer is threatening to prevent sowing of next year’s crops.

* Greece sank deeper into recession in the second quarter, according to provisional data released on Thursday by the national statistics service.

* Eurozone banks face a “manageable” task to replace an estimated €1,300bn ($1,667bn) of debt finance that is due to be repaid over the next three and a half years, the European Central Bank said on Thursday.

* Eurozone factory output dropped 0.1% in June, against forecasts of a 0.6% jump.