Friday Papers: US Senate passes financial reform - other news

Financial Times

* The US Senate finally passed a landmark reform of Wall Street, the Dodd-Frank Act, on Thursday; a new orderly liquidation authority to deal with a future AIG or Lehman without any cost to the taxpayer is widely thought to be the most significant innovation in the act.

* Fairfield Energy on Thursday said its $500m (£328m) listing has been postponed due to difficult market conditions.

* The Chinese economy grew at 10.3 per cent in the second quarter over the year before.

* The shares of Agricultural Bank of China finished their Shanghai trading debut on Thursday up less than 1 per cent from their issue price.

* Business groups across the European Union reacted angrily to moves by German, French and British ministers to raise substantially the targets for carbon emissions cuts.

* BP stops leak from stricken gulf well; however, BP and the US administration warned that it was too soon to say whether the well could remain shut off.

* The FTSE All-Word equity index fought back to end the day flat and the FTSE 100 in London fell 0.8 per cent; the S&P 500 closed up 0.1 per cent; the FTSE Asia-Pacific index fell 0.9 per cent, Shanghai dipped 1.9 per cent and Hong Kong lost 1.5 per cent.

* GlaxoSmithKline expects to take a £1.57bn ($2.41bn) charge to resolve several long-running legal battles.

* Vince Cable warned on Thursday that the government could allow universities to go bankrupt as figures showed the higher education sector creaking under the pressure of a jump in applications.

* Recovery in US manufacturing is losing momentum, according to weak data.

* Silvio Berlusconi’s government won Senate approval yesterday for its €25bn austerity plans.