Monday Papers: Glencore pays more to win Xstrata

Top stories

• Financial Times: Investors in Xstrata are set to receive 2.8 Glencore shares for every Xstrata share they hold, in an $88 billion merger that would combine the world’s leading trading house with one of the biggest mining groups.
• The Guardian: Sharp declines in bank lending to smaller firms, and a collapse in confidence across the sector outlined in three reports will put pressure on the Bank of England to pump an extra £50 billion into the economy when it meets on Thursday.
• Financial Times: The European Banking Authority is to challenge a significant proportion of the capital restructuring plans put forward by the continent’s leading banks to meet tough new capital requirements.
• The Daily Telegraph: Xstrata and Glencore could face an unexpected competition hurdle to their proposed £50 billion merger, with the European Commission poised to ignore an earlier ruling that would have avoided an investigation.
• Financial Times: Lucas Papademos, the Greek premier, failed to make party leaders accept harsh terms in return for a second €130 billion bail-out, pushing Athens closer to a disorderly default as early as next month.
• The Daily Telegraph: Dubai's government has walked away from the $10 billion debt restructuring of one of its biggest conglomerates, leaving creditors, including the Royal Bank of Scotland, with exposure to potentially big losses.
• Financial Times: Iran has indicated that its threat to cut oil supplies to European states in order to pre-empt a European Union oil embargo that comes into effect in July may be only a symbolic one.

Business and economics

• Financial Times: Facebook is set to begin showing advertisements to users on mobile devices within weeks in an effort to tap a new source of revenues before it goes public.
• Financial Times: Apple will face fresh shareholder pressure at its annual meeting this month to change the way it elects directors.
• The Daily Telegraph: Consensus forecasts put BP’s “clean” earnings for the last three months of 2011, which are released on Tuesday, at $4.87 billion - higher than that of Shell.
• Financial Times: An independent Scotland would not be able to count on receiving triple A status, three leading credit rating agencies, Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch, have indicated.
• Financial Times: Junk bond issuance totalled a record $19.6 billion last week, in the latest sign of relentless demand for low-rated corporate debt this year.
• Financial Times: The S&P financials sector in the US has begun trading above the book value of its assets for the first time since July in a sign of a turn in investor sentiment towards banks.
• The Daily Telegraph: Bob Diamond’s potential £11 million pay packet at Barclays is set to reignite the continuing row over bankers’ bonuses when the bank unveils its full year numbers on Friday.
• Daily Mail: Barclays is expected to announce annual profits of £6 billion on Friday – broadly similar to the previous year and an incredible £16.4 million a day or £685,000 an hour.
• Financial Times: Banco Sabadell, the Spanish lender, has begun sounding out investors about a rights issue worth up to €1.2 billion as part of a cascade of recapitalisations and mergers predicted across the Spanish banking sector.
• Financial Times: The UK internet economy is valued at £82 billion, almost 6% of gross domestic product, according to AT Kearney, which is significantly higher than the global average.
• Financial Times: Lion Capital and its Rothschild financial advisers are in talks with three consumer groups, including Nestlé, of Switzerland, over a sale of Findus’s Nordic operations to avoid breaching the terms of the UK frozen food maker’s £700 million debt load; such a deal could fetch €700-€800 million.
• Financial Times: Enrico Cucchiani, the new chief executive of Intesa SanPaolo, plans to shake up top management, as Italy’s biggest bank by market value seeks to reinvent itself as “less Italian” and more of a global player.
• The Daily Telegraph: Pakistani billionaire Alshair Fiyaz has teamed up with Danish investment fund Solstra Capital and is working on a rescue bid for beleaguered retailer Peacocks.
• Daily Mail: Britain and France are expected to sign a deal to develop a high-tech unmanned aircraft based on the topsecret Mantis project developed by BAE Systems in Lancashire.
• Financial Times: Hanwha Group, a conglomerate specialising in explosives and chemicals, has scrambled to avoid suspension from South Korea’s stock exchange as prosecutors intensify corruption investigations against the country’s top businessmen.
• The Daily Telegraph: Drugs giant GlaxoSmith Kline will reveal the results of a Dragons’ Den-style review of its research projects this week, after departments competed for £1.1 billion of funding.
• Daily Mail: British boot and shoemaker Dr Martens has been put up for sale by R Griggs Group, which has owned it for more than 50 years; it could fetch as much as £120 million.
• Financial Times: The funding gap for pension plans of S&P 500 companies almost doubled in 2011, analysts say, to around $450 billion, as bond yields dropped, causing the size of future liabilities to grow.
• The Daily Telegraph: Outdoor clothing specialist Musto is set to become the latest retailer to refinance its debts as the consumer economy continues to disappoint.
• The Guardian: The transport secretary, Justine Greening, is planning to vote against a proposed £20 million bonus pool for Network Rail executives.

Share tips, comment and bids

• Financial Times: Vodafone is set to abandon attempts to merge its Greek business with rival Wind Hellas.
• Financial Times (Comment): Capitalism works – and works far better than any other system – because the discipline of the marketplace keeps greed, folly and incompetence in check.
• Financial Times (Editorial): Consolidating mining and trading – Xstrata and Glencore – bodes ill for consumers. The analogy in the oil market would be a Saudi Arabia producing three times more crude than it already does.
• The Guardian (Editorial): Let's move our money from big banks to credit unions, ethical banks and building societies.
• The Daily Telegraph (Comment): At this week’s meeting, the Monetary Policy Committee may well decide to undertake another £50-75 billion of Quantitative Easing. Some will think this too small; some will think it too big.
• Financial Times (The Lex Column): Glencore/Xstrata: investors assume that ‘merger of equals’ with diversified miner is a done deal, but there are reasons to ask if it is a marriage of convenience.
• Financial Times (The Lex Column): Sharp’s the action: Japanese technology company has slashed its outlook but the bigger problem is its reliance on liquid crystal display TVs.
• Financial Times (The Lex Column): TV studios: Despite the predictions of futurists, the programme-making segments of the media conglomerates are doing quite well, but ratings need to bounce.