Thursday Papers: SocGen slapped with £1.6m fine for filing inaccurate reports - other news

Financial Times

* Société Générale has been fined £1.575m for filing inaccurate reports to UK regulators on 80 per cent of its trades over a two-year period.

* Bob Herz, chairman of the US Financial Accounting Standards Board, has announced that he will retire, giving way to a shake-up of the board of the powerful US accounting rule maker.

* Plus Markets has unveiled a plan to turn the small-cap listings and price-reporting platform into a fully fledged stock and derivatives exchange.

* The US Chamber of Commerce vowed to use “every method available” to fight a rule agreed on Wednesday that will allow shareholders directly to nominate board directors.

* Apple is expected to drop the price of its stalled set-top television box by as much as two-thirds.

* New home sales in the US fell by 32.4% in July year-on-year to a record low adjusted annual rate of 276,000, commerce department figures showed; median house prices also fell, declining by 4.8% to $204,000 in July.

* Taiwan bourse to host its first Chinese listing.

* Regulators should act to stop banks from exploiting differences in the amount of capital they have to hold against losses in their trading and banking books, the UK Financial Services Authority said on Wednesday.

* Nick Clegg has launched a fierce attack on the Institute for Fiscal Studies, accusing the budget watchdog of making “impossible assumptions” in finding that the coalition’s first Budget in June would hit the poor hardest.

The Daily Telegraph

* The Swiss franc has surged to an all-time high against the euro on capital flight from the eurozone after Irish, Greek, and Portuguese bonds came under renewed fire.