Monday Papers: Lagarde attacked over bank comments - money and other news

Financial Times

* European officials on Sunday accused the IMF managing director Christine Lagarde of making a “confused” and “misguided” attack on the health of Europe’s banks.

* The tax contribution of the Premier League’s 20 clubs is set to exceed £1 billion this season - an increase of more than a third over the past two seasons, according to accountancy firm Saffery Champness.

* Information technology companies are becoming reluctant to build big data centres in the UK because of uncertainties and additional costs created by the government’s carbon reduction commitments.

* The UK building society sector will continue to see one or two mergers a year as the mutual lenders face pressures from low profitability, says KPMG.

* Rebel investors at Healthcare Locums , the beleaguered medical recruitment company which suspended its shares six months ago, have claimed that they have enough support to block a controversial rescue refinancing aimed at relisting the shares on 13 September.

* Labour is seeking to embarrass the government by pushing for stop-gap rules to tighten controls on media ownership in the wake of Rupert Murdoch’s aborted attempt to take full control of British Sky Broadcasting.

* 60% of rigs contracted in the Gulf of Mexico are not working almost a year and a half after the Macondo disaster.

* Regulators are in danger of enabling BT to become the dominant provider of high-speed broadband infrastructure, Virgin Media has claimed.

* Ten specialist UK manufacturers have formed an unusual consortium in which they abandon the normal codes of commercial confidentiality, passing to each other contact details about customers and suppliers, with a view to building up sales for the group as a whole.