Saturday Papers: Betfair to consider £1.5bn listing - other news

Financial Times

* Betfair, the world’s biggest betting exchange operator, is to consider a stock market flotation that could value the group at £1.5bn.

* Bank stocks failed to rise despite the end of uncertainty over Washington’s new rules for Wall Street and a high-profile regulatory action against Goldman Sachs; BofA fell more than 9 per cent, while Shares in Citi dropped more than 5 per cent.

* AIG is to pay $725m to a group of Ohio pension funds to settle a six-year-old class action lawsuit over allegations of securities fraud.

* Royal Bank of Scotland is considering legal action against Goldman Sachs.

* Agricultural Bank of China’s international underwriters have agreed to a 30 per cent cut in the fees they were poised to earn for the Hong Kong portion of the bank’s initial public offering; the bank's shares on Friday ended up 2.2 per cent on their trading debut in Hong Kong.

* The names of dozens of suspected fraudsters and tax evaders have cropped up in a stash of stolen Swiss bank data recently passed to Revenue & Customs, according to people familiar with the situation.

* Steve Jobs on Friday gave a grudging apology for the reception problems plaguing Apple’s iPhone 4.

* Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Friday said that Europe would always be one of the main investment markets for China’s foreign exchange reserves.

* General Electric will keep the business model combining industrial and financial products;  “We don’t have to separate GE

and GE Capital and we don’t have to give up our banks in Utah," said Keith Sherin, GE’s chief financial officer said.

* Toyota and Nissan have announced a combined $1.2bn of investments to build their presence in Latin America’s expanding car markets; Toyota said it would invest $600m in a new plant in Brazil.