Thursday Papers: Goldman faces £20m fine from UK regulator - other news

Financial Times

* Goldman Sachs is facing a fine thought to be near £20m from the UK’s financial regulator following a five-month investigation into the investment bank’s international business.

* The Irish government has sought to bring to a close the costly bail-out of Anglo Irish Bank with the decision to formally separate the bank’s troubled property loans from its customer deposits.

* Preet Bharara, US attorney for the southern district of New York, will on Thursday declare another front in the war on Wall Street fraud, focusing new resources on civil litigation to complement existing criminal actions.

* Simon Dingemans, one of Goldman Sachs’ veteran dealmakers in London, is leaving the bank to join drugmaker GlaxoSmith-Kline as chief financial officer.

* Grant Thornton has become the first major UK auditor to respond to new governance rules by announcing the appointment of independent non-executive directors to help oversee its business.

* Goldman Sachs has poached one of UBS’s senior bankers in London; Philip Shelley, co-head of corporate broking at UBS, will join Goldman towards the end of this year, sources said.

* Hungary has bowed to a key European Union demand by agreeing to cut its budget deficit to below 3% of gross domestic product next year.

* The FTSE All-World index was up 0.3 per cent; the FTSE Eurofirst 300 up 1%; the FTSE 100 in London added 0.4%.

* Google has unveiled changes to the way it presents search results in what it described as one of the most significant updates in its 12-year history.

* Business secretary Vince Cable has conceded that Britain’s biggest banks may avoid being split up along “crude” lines.

* ECB steps in to shore up the eurozone government bond markets.