Monday Papers: Iran battles to sell oil as sanctions start to bite

Top stories

• Financial Times: Iran is struggling to find a buyer for nearly a quarter of its annual oil exports as looming western sanctions targeting the country’s nuclear programme start to bite the world’s third-biggest crude exporter.
• The Daily Telegraph: Iran has stopped selling crude to British and French companies, the country’s oil ministry said on Sunday, in a retaliatory measure against fresh EU sanctions.
• Financial Times: Eurozone governments are looking to the European Central Bank and national central banks to help pare back the cost of a second rescue package for Greece which would otherwise amount to €170 billion.
• The Independent: British retail picked up in the three months to the end of January, with footfall 1.8% higher than a year earlier.
• Financial Times: Western insurers will gain access to the rapidly growing $47.6 billion Chinese motor market after Xi Jinping, the country’s designated next leader, agreed the move in the US last week.
• The Independent: Councillors at Sedgemoor District Council in Somerset is taking on the mighty EDF Energy in a row over the cost of a planning application for a £10 billion nuclear power station.

Business and economics

• Financial Times: Shell and other natural resources companies have stepped up efforts to counteract planned anti-corruption rules that would force them to disclose payments to governments in countries where they operate.
• Financial Times: Leading investment banks are considering creating currency products that would protect companies and investors in the event of a partial break-up of the euro.
• Financial Times: Banks are stepping up the use of a clause in syndicated corporate loan agreements that triggers an automatic default by the borrower if it acquires any company with a defined-benefit pension scheme.
• The Independent: Britain’s Competition Commission is holding an inquiry into the dominance of KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and PwC in examining the accounts of publicly traded companies; the big four audit all but one firm in the FTSE 100.
• The Guardian: Lloyds Banking Group is to announce that it intends to "claw back" bonuses from as many as 10 senior bankers because of the £3.2 billion losses that the bailed-out bank suffered after the payouts were awarded a year ago.
• Financial Times: Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group are expected to post losses for 2011 of about £4 billion – equivalent to the charges they took on payment protection insurance in the first half of the year.
• The Independent: General Electric's UK division has initially set aside $5 million to invest in European "clean technology" start-ups.
• Daily Mail: Centrica is forecast to report record profits overall of £2.5 billion, an increase of 4% on the previous year.
• Financial Times: Hewlett-Packard is planning to launch a series of printers and computers embedded with Autonomy’s search software - best known for catching insider trading at banks and monitoring call-centre phone calls.
• Daily Mail: Britain's top secret QinetiQ defence company will this week start critical tests on the new Boeing 737 at its world-leading wind tunnel in Hampshire.
• Financial Times: Denmark’s Maersk Line is to significantly reduce capacity in its Asia to Europe services, as oversupply of ships in the Asia to Europe route had pushed rates a container down to “unsustainably low levels”.
• Financial Times: Britain is staking its claim to lead the race to find a carbon-free car engine by bringing two innovative hydrogen power companies - Acal Energy and ITM Power - together.
• Financial Times: Fujitsu will launch a wide range of smartphones and tablets for the first time in Europe.
• The Daily Telegraph: Rupert Murdoch will unveil the first Sun on Sunday next week.
• Financial Times: Edmond de Rothschild’s private equity arm has fired the starting pistol on the fundraising for a €250 million vehicle in a move to accelerate its investments in European and US biotech, pharmaceutical and medical technology companies.
• Financial Times: Wynn Resorts has requested the resignation of Kazuo Okada from its board and redeemed his stake in the company, bringing to a head the long-simmering dispute between Okada and Steve Wynn, his co-founder at the hotel and casino operator.
• Financial Times: The ownership of Travelodge is moving out of the hands of its Dubai backers and into the grasp of two US hedge funds - GoldenTree Asset Management and Avenue Capital - that have been long-term buyers of its debt.
• Financial Times: Telenor’s Indian joint venture has warned that looming delays to the process of auctioning 122 cancelled mobile telecom licences in the country could put the future of Uninor at risk.
• The Independent: The UK's largest pawnbroker, H&T, is targeting upmarket customers who have fallen on hard times, and is eyeing shops in affluent areas.
• The Daily Telegraph: Sales at Grangers, the parent company of Cherry Blossom, increased by 32% last year.

Share tips, comment and bids

• Financial Times: Pfizer is weighing plans to raise about $3 billion this year through a part-flotation of its animal health division.
• The Independent: Abel & Cole, the online organic grocer, is preparing its second attempt to sell the business, with an estimated price tag of more than £30 million.
• Financial Times (Comment): It is one thing for creditors to interfere in a recipient’s policies. It is another to tell them to suspend elections
• The Guardian (Comment): The policy guru thinks that Virgin Atlantic is an 'upstart'. His confusion is Branson's PR triumph.
• The Daily Telegraph (Comment): After a deceptive calm, the surge in job losses in Greece since last summer is shocking even for those who never believed that combined fiscal and monetary contraction could possibly lead to any result other than ruin.
• Financial Times (The Lex Column): Baidu: its shares trade at 31 times this year’s expected earnings – twice Google’s valuation. But Baidu still has to deliver what investors seek.
• Financial Times (The Lex Column): European banks: if investors have been leery, global rivals have not. The US and Japan are eating the Europeans’ lunch – and cherry-picking for dessert.
• Financial Times (The Lex Column): Tyre makers’ shares are not expensive, trading on 2012 multiples of around 8 times. In spite of recent gains, they could bounce further.