Sunday Papers: RBS staff held after tax probe

Top stories

• The Sunday Telegraph: Royal Bank of Scotland has been drawn into a criminal tax fraud investigation as five current and former employees of its investment banking arm have been arrested as part of a wider probe thought to involve at least two other City institutions.
• The Independent on Sunday: Comet is pressuring landlords to slash its annual rental bill of £77 million just days after the private equity firm OpCapita paid a token £2 for the beleaguered electricals chain.
• The Sunday Telegraph: EasyJet's board has won the support of its three largest institutional shareholders in its increasingly bitter battle with founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou over executive pay.

Business and economics

• The Sunday Telegraph: Greece could need an extra €15 billion of international aid in addition to the €130 billion in the works as the result of its continued failure to stem public spending.
• The Independent on Sunday: The fate of more than 9,000 staff at Peacocks will be decided this week, as the high street's biggest administration since Woolworths in 2008 comes to a head.
• The Sunday Telegraph: The Office for National Statistics is expected to say on Tuesday the annual rate of inflation fell to 3.6% in January, from 4.2% in December, providing some relief for consumers.
• Mail on Sunday: Changes to tax credit will mean 'going out to work makes no sense' for some couples, according to Rachel Reeves, the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury minister.
• The Sunday Telegraph: British banks stand to fall behind their US counterparts as major Wall Street banks continue to pay large cash bonuses to London-based staff.
• The Sunday Telegraph: The Falkland Islands stand to benefit from an enormous $176 billion tax windfall from oil and gas exploration, according to a major new report.
• The Sunday Telegraph: The British engineering firm Dyson has broken through the £1 billion turnover figure for the first time and is to pledge to create 500 new skilled jobs in the UK.

Share tips, comment and bids

• The Independent on Sunday: Glencore boss Ivan Glasenberg will personally champion the commodity trader's proposed $90 billion megamerger with Xstrata to disgruntled investors this week after a series of big-name funds vowed to vote down the tie-up.
• The Sunday Telegraph: Nat Rothschild is poised to remain on the board of Bumi, the Indonesian mining giant, despite rival shareholders attempting to vote him off.
• The Independent on Sunday: Travelex has emerged as a leading contender to buy Thomas Cook's Indian foreign exchange business, which was put up for sale last week.
• The Sunday Telegraph: Global Infrastructure Partners, 3i and a consortium backed by US private equity giant Carlyle Group are due to take an early lead in the race for Edinburgh Airport as the deadline for first-round bids expires this week.
• Mail on Sunday (Comment): Investment trusts are the forgotten force of the retail investment world. Advisers or fund discount brokers, with a few notable exceptions, fail to recommend them because they don’t earn a penny, either upfront or on an ongoing basis.
• The Sunday Telegraph (Comment): David Cameron was facing a fresh backlash from business leaders this weekend as technology executives and the president of the Confederation of British Industry said they feared that the “anti-business” rhetoric of politicians was damaging growth.
• The Sunday Telegraph (Comment): The appointment of a new head of the Commonwealth Business Council never made the headlines, but with Britain's need for growth as the eurozone struggles it should have.
• The Sunday Telegraph (Comment): Eurozone authorities have staged four “last-ditch” summits over the last year, each of them producing a “rescue package” which the markets have promptly rejected. So “something big” now needs to happen, if we’re to see a lasting shift in investor sentiment.
• The Sunday Telegraph (Comment): When is a minority shareholder not a minority shareholder? When the company is Bumi, Nat Rothschild’s Indonesian coal mining venture, that’s when.
• The Independent on Sunday (Comment): It is inherently improbable, is it not, that a bit of pushback by the government of Greece towards the conditions being imposed on it should be sufficient to unsettle shares around the world and break the pretty strong bull market?