Thursday Papers: HSBC eyes Flint as compromise chairman - other news

Financial Times

* HSBC finance director Douglas Flint is shaping up as the likely candidate to replace Stephen Green as chairman, sources said.

* The Obama administration is set to lower its estimate of the cost of the troubled asset relief programme when it celebrates the end of the bail-out effort next week.

* Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives will move ahead with a bill allowing the US to retaliate against China for manipulating its currency.

* Lehman Brothers has recovered nearly $60 billion in value for creditors since September 2008.

* Hochtief, the German construction group, has hired Goldman Sachs as a banking advisor.

* Citigroup is to open brokerage businesses in Malaysia and Indonesia and increase its Vietnamese and Thai branch networks.

* Perella Weinberg Partners, the independent advisory firm, is opening an office in Abu Dhabi.

* A sharp slowdown in trading activity led Jefferies to report its worst quarter since the market hit bottom last year; net revenues were $520 million, a fall of 26% from the same quarter last year.

* Gold rose and the dollar fell on investor fears of competitive currency devaluations; dollar dropped 1.5% on a trade-weighted basis since the Fed’s statement over quantitative easing; spot gold continued its advance to set a fresh record just shy of $1,300 an ounce.

* Siemens’ German workers have struck a deal that includes a pledge not to make any forced redundancies among its 128,000 German workforce.

* Alessandro Profumo, former UniCredit chief executive, lost the confidence of all but one of the bank’s 22 board members in a vote which led to his sudden exit from the bank on Tuesday.