Saturday Papers: Cameron calls for truce on bonuses

Top stories

• Financial Times: David Cameron has called for a truce in the battle over bank bonuses in an attempt to repair fractured relations with the City; he has chosen not to censure Barclays’ bonus pool; RBS likely to distribute pay-outs likely to total £500 million.
• The Daily Telegraph: Leading shareholder groups have attacked Barclays over the level of bonuses paid by the bank to staff in its investment banking arm; the bank set aside a £1.5 billion bonus pool for staff in Barclays Capital; Barclays reported a 3% fall in full-year pre-tax profits to £5.9 billion and said it was no longer likely to hit its 13% return on equity target next year.
• The Daily Telegraph: Greece's plans to avert bankruptcy were in chaos on Friday night as politicians, police and protesters formed a powerful and violent opposition to the internationally-imposed austerity measures.
• The Guardian: Spain cuts rescued bank Bankia boss's pay by 75% to €600,000, while nationalised banks' chiefs will be limited to half.
• The Guardian: China said its imports fell in January at the fastest annual pace since the lowpoint of the global financial crisis in 2009.

Business and economics

• The Daily Telegraph: UK Banks lent £74.9 billion to small business in 2011, £1.1 billion short of their target under the Project Merlin deal, which lenders, including Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland, signed with the Government.
• Financial Times: A Bristol credit union is launching its own bank notes with which traders in the city will be able to pay their business taxes.
• The Daily Telegraph: Ratings agency Fitch gave its seal of approval to the Bank of England's decision to inject fresh stimulus into the economy, saying it put the UK in a better budgetary position than both France and Germany.
• The Daily Telegraph: BP has won a legal victory preventing some of the oil giant's previous accidents being used as evidence in the trial to assign blame for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
• The Daily Telegraph: Lenders to struggling video games retailer Game Group have hired PwC to look at the long-term strategy of the business.
• Financial Times: The US trade deficit increased more than expected in December on rising imports and higher oil prices.
• The Daily Telegraph: European politicians have agreed on plans to overhaul the $700 trillion derivatives market; banks, hedge funds and others who trade in derivatives will be encouraged to move away from the unregulated "over-the-counter" market which currently accounts for about 95% of all trades.
• The Daily Telegraph: Berkshire Hathaway chairman and famous investor Warren Buffett has dismissed gold as a "valueless asset"; in an article for Fortune magazine, Buffett said that the metal was a self-inflating bubble, created by investors desperate for a viable alternative to property and shares.
• The Independent: Tesla Motors, the electric sports car company backed by Silicon Valley tycoons including Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, has unveiled its battery-powered Model X.
• The Independent: Flybe's UK passenger revenues fell in the four months since October.
• The Independent: A sudden spike in crude oil pushed up manufacturers' costs in January, giving the Bank of England a fresh inflation warning a day after it voted to pump an extra £50 billion into the struggling UK economy.
• Daily Mail: Fears for thousands of British jobs and the future of Vauxhall’s UK car plant have surfaced after bosses at US parent company General Motors warned of ‘horrendous’ losses in Europe to be announced next week.
• Financial Times: Ben Verwaayen, chief executive of Alcatel-Lucent, predicted that the long-struggling company would generate “strong” levels of cash this year.
• The Guardian: De Beers, the world's largest diamond group, said demand for rough diamonds and polished stones was "exceptional" last year, pushing profits up almost 50% despite concerns about the global economy.
• The Guardian: Cable & Wireless Communications has warned its full year results would not meet expectations; its shares slumped 17% yesterday.
• Financial Times: Standard & Poor’s cut the credit ratings of 34 Italian banks, including significant financial institutions in the country, following a downgrade of Italy last month.
• The Guardian: About 450 jobs will go at electricals retailer Comet under a plan to reduce its repairs service.
• Financial Times: BG Group joined the growing band of energy companies planning to reduce production of shale gas in North America in response to declining wholesale prices this week.
• The Guardian: Zynga, whose games account for $445 million of Facebook's $3.7 billion revenue in 2011, to create FarmVille figurines with toy firm.

Share tips, comment and bids

• The Daily Telegraph: A leading investor, Fidelity Worldwide Investment, has added its voice to the chorus calling for management behind the planned £54 billion merger of miner Xstrata and commodity trader Glencore to revise the terms of the deal.
• The Daily Telegraph: Drug development company Vernalis has signed a pact with America’s Tris Pharma to develop long-lasting cough and cold medicines.
• The Independent: Takeover talks between the insurance company Phoenix and the private equity house CVC that have been rumbling on since November collapsed yesterday.
• The Independent: Weir Group, the deal-hungry FTSE 100 pump manufacturer, made an A$294 million (£200m) offer for an Australian mining equipment maker.
• Financial Times: First-round bids for Edinburgh airport are due on Monday in what is expected to be a fierce battle for one of the UK’s fastest-growing airports.
• Financial Times: CVC, the owner of Nine Entertainment, the Australian media group, is exploring a possible sale of ACP, its magazines business, as one of several options for restructuring its debts.
• Financial Times: Total, the French oil group, has promised to invest an average of $23 billion a year until 2014 as it joins industry peers in spending more on exploration and production to replace dwindling reserves.
• The Daily Telegraph (Comment): Well, that was predictable. Bob Diamond ducked questions on his own bonus on Friday on the grounds that, if he'd 'fessed up to what he'd trousered, that's all anybody would talk about.
• The Independent (Comment): Higher education, health and media look the best bets for London's survival.
• The Independent (Comment): Those optimistic investors who are paying 10 times annual revenue for a share of LinkedIn ought to look over their shoulder.
• The Independent (Comment): Will Amazon take on Apple on the high street? The answer is, it must.
• The Independent (Sharewatch): Credit Suisse and Panmure Gordon raised their target prices for InterContinental shares; Goldman Sachs cuts ICAP ratings to "neutral"; Credit Suisse and Espirito Santo raised their target prices for WS Atkins; Renaissance downgraded Ferrexpo to "hold" from "buy".
• Daily Mail (Comment): Marriage between Xstrata and Glencore is stupefyingly huge. Uniquely, the merged group will be involved in every stage of bringing a commodity to the market, from digging up coal, through processing, transport and logistics to selling the end product on world markets.
• Daily Mail (Comment): The only thing about Barclays’ results that people really wanted to know, the size of Bob Diamond’s pay packet, remains a closely guarded secret. If this was a tactic designed to ensure that the focus was on the financial performance of the bank, the outcome is decidedly mixed.
• Daily Mail (Comment): Misys, the leading UK software group being taken over by Swiss rival Temenos, is precisely the kind high-tech firm we should be aiming to keep on British soil.
• Financial Times (Lex): Alcatel-Lucent sits uneasily between sector technology leader – Ericsson – and Chinese companies, such as Huawei, that tend to win on cost.
• Financial Times (Lex): Libor penalty - now that investigations into possible manipulation of the rate have accelerated, the extent of possible damages may be too scary for lawmakers to implement.
• Financial Times (Lex): Barclays: Bob Diamond must prove BarCap’s fourth-quarter slowdown is a one-off and that a higher dividend of 6p a share is not a confidence trick.