Tuesday Papers: Earnings provide lift against Europe debt concerns - other news

Financial Times

* The FTSE All-World equity index was down 0.1 per cent, while the FTSE 100 in London fell 0.2 per cent; the S&P 500 in New York was up 0.6 per cent; in Asia the S&P/ASX 200 closed down 1.5 per cent, while the CSI was up 2.1 per cent.

* Hoare Govett, the corporate broking arm of Royal Bank of Scotland, has won a co-broker mandate at Cable & Wireless Worldwide; the other co-broker is Deutsche Bank.

* Fabrice Tourre, the Goldman Sachs executive and co-defendant in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s charges that the bank defrauded investors, on Monday issued a strong denial of the charges.

* Nigeria has created a “bad bank” to soak up some of the estimated $10bn of bad loans that brought the banking system to the brink of collapse last year.

* SThree, the white-collar recruiter, announced a 34.8 per cent fall in underlying profits to £7.4m in the six months to May 30; the shares fell 7.1 per cent to 272.2p.

* Birds Eye Iglo aims to double its sales and become Europe’s dominant frozen food producer with €400m of profits and €2bn of turnover by 2013, its chief executive said on Monday after agreeing to acquire Findus Italy from Unilever.

* Moody’s on Monday downgraded Ireland’s government bond ratings by one notch to Aa2 because of the country’s deteriorating public finances.

* The US government on Monday allowed BP to extend for 24 hours the containment cap shutting off the leak from the Macondo well after determining that nearby seepage was not related to pressure tests.

* Lord Black, the Canadian-born peer and former publishing magnate who was convicted of fraud, could be released from a Florida prison on bail within days pending an appeal.

* China overtook the US last year to become the world’s biggest energy user, the International Energy Agency revealed on Monday.

The Daily Telegraph