Wednesday Papers: Eurozone divisions threaten Greece aid

Top stories

• Financial Times: Eurozone officials have called off an emergency meeting of finance ministers to approve a vital €130 billion bail-out for Athens amid a growing fight about the merits of allowing Greece to go bankrupt.
• Daily Mail: The two chieftains at the top of Glencore and Xstrata have carved out their roles in £57 billion merger of their corporate empires; Mick Davis, who is slated as chief executive of Glenstrata, is expected to concentrate on investor relations, while Ivan Glasenberg will focus on trading.
• Financial Times: Britain’s annual inflation rate eased to 3.6% last month, continuing its steep decline from a peak of more than 5% in the autumn.
• Financial Times: Industrial production across the 17-country eurozone fell by 1.1% in December, compared with the previous month, according to Eurostat.
• The Guardian: British Chancellor George Osborne said the shock warning of a downgrade of the UK credit rating by Moody's demonstrated that the government "cannot waver" from its deficit reduction course – as the governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, warned that monetary policy has reached the limits of what it can do to promote growth.
• Financial Times: Greece’s recession worsened at the end of last year, as the economy contracted by 7% in three months to December compared with the same period in the previous year.

Business and economics

• Financial Times: Pressure is rising across the globe to raise taxes for private equity bosses, with German and Swedish authorities pushing for legislative changes and a leading US pension fund investor calling the 15% rate in America “indefensible”.
• The Daily Telegraph: The British government has filed a second lawsuit against the European Central Bank attempting to block its "location policy" that would see clearing houses dealing in euro-denominated instruments forced to move within the eurozone.
• Financial Times: BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have signalled their optimism about long-term demand for copper by approving plans to spend $4.5 billion on the massive Escondida mine in Chile, and to reopen a smaller copper mine in the US.
• The Guardian: Lloyd's of London has estimated that it is liable for $2.22 billion of net claims from the flooding that devastated Thailand last year.
• Financial Times: HSBC is aiming to increase its presence in mainland China through a big expansion of its branch network or by raising its stake in Bank of Communications.
• The Daily Telegraph: BP's American investors have scored a legal victory after a US judge ruled that the oil company must face fraud allegations over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
• The Guardian: Social gaming firm Zynga, the maker of internet games FarmVille and Words With Friends, posted fourth-quarter revenues of $307 million, or 5 cents per share.
• Daily Mail: InterContinental Hotels Group said its full-year pre-tax profit rose 34% to £339 million ahead of market forecasts.
• Financial Times: ThyssenKrupp, the German steel and engineering conglomerate, posted a worse than anticipated €480m net loss in its fiscal first quarter.
• The Guardian: Thousands of staff at the collapsed retailer Peacocks are facing further uncertainty after it was reported that only one company - Indian textile and clothing giant S Kumars Nationwide - remains in the race to salvage it.
• Financial Times: The Indonesian investors in coal miner Bumi have said UK financier Nat Rothschild can stay on the company’s board, but only if he steps down as co-chairman and stops being a “disruptive influence” over his calls for a shake-up at PT Bumi Resources.
• Financial Times: Golar LNG has signed contracts worth more than $400 million for two vessels of 162,000 cubic metres each from Korea’s Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries.
• The Daily Telegraph: Jaguar Land Rover made record pre-tax profits of £559 million in the final three months of 2011 as demand for its premium cars soared in Asia.
• Financial Times: Overseas Shipholding Group, the operator of one of the world’s largest oil tanker fleets, has filed a “shelf registration” with the Securities and Exchange Commission that would let it issue up to $500 million in new securities in future.
• Daily Mail: Yell has posted a 15.1% year-on-year slump in sales to £382.8 million for the three months to the end of December.
• The Independent: The aero-engines maker Rolls-Royce has bagged a $210 million contract from Fiji's national airline, Air Pacific.
• Financial Times: Apple’s long-running dispute over the iPad trademark in China could threaten global shipments of the popular tablet as the company which registered the trademark in the country is seeking an export ban from Chinese customs.
• Financial Times: Dan Loeb, manager of New York-based hedge fund Third Point, on Tuesday launched a fight over control of Yahoo’s boardroom, as it emerged that the beleaguered company’s efforts to sell its Asian investments might have foundered.
• The Independent: Publisher Bloomsbury is to set up a new business in India to take advantage of growing demand from the country's English-speaking middle class.
• Financial Times: Total revenues at MAN, the German truckmaker, are set to fall “slightly” in 2012, as commercial vehicle revenues decline by up to 5%.
• Financial Times: Coal and coke processor and distributor Hargreaves Services expects to double its pre-tax profits on continental European activities to £20 million over the next three years.
• The Independent: Pure Gym, the value gyms chain backed by New Look founder Tom Singh, has this month raised funding of £15 million to drive its expansion.

Share tips, comment and bids

• Financial Times: Hermes Real Estate, one of the UK’s largest property fund managers, completed a deal on Tuesday to acquire Westfield’s half share in the £400 million retail portfolio, which consists of two shopping centres in the south of England and one in Belfast.
• Financial Times: A group of five private equity funds that controls TDC, Denmark’s largest telecoms company, has sold almost $1 billion of shares as it continues to reduce its exposure to what was Europe’s largest leveraged buy-out in 2006.
• The Daily Telegraph: Royal Bank of Scotland's insurance arm has been renamed as Direct Line Group ahead of a potential £4 billion-£5 billion stock market flotation later this year.
• Financial Times: The state of Hamburg is to become the largest shareholder in Hapag-Lloyd, the German city’s flagship container shipping line, as travel group Tui completes its latest attempt to reduce its stake in the line from 38.4% at present to 22% by June.
• Financial Times: The banking foundation behind Monte dei Paschi di Siena has decided to divest a stake of about 15% in Italy’s third-largest bank by assets in an attempt to reduce its €1 billion debt.
• The Independent: The retail group Aurora Fashions has appointed advisers to sell its stake in the luxury womenswear label Bastyan after just two years.
• The Daily Telegraph: Cable & Wireless Worldwide's new chief executive, Gavin Darby, stands to make more than £600,000 from the sale of the company to Vodafone, after less than three months' work.
• Financial Times: Facebook faces a requirement to raise as much as $5 billion through an extra share sale late this year to cover a tax bill for its employees.
• Financial Times: The 3,000-odd employees of Facebook stand to collect an average of more than $7 million each from the social networking site’s IPO.
• The Guardian (Comment): Scrutinising fund managers who play the markets with other people's money is long overdue.
• The Guardian (Comment): Capitalism is triumphant as EU states sacrifice the Greek people in a desperate attempt to appease the gods of speculation.
• The Daily Telegraph (Comment): Moody's decision to place the UK on "negative outlook" was leapt upon by critics of the Coalition's economic policies as a sign that the Treasury had got it wrong and it was time to reverse ferret, open the rusted credit taps and spend.
• The Daily Telegraph (Comment): Nobody takes the credit rating agencies seriously any longer, do they?
• Daily Mail (Comment – Alex Brummer): Nat Rothschild’s approach to business is seen by some family members as unhelpful in preserving the mystique and hard-won reputation of the world’s most enduring banking dynasty.
• Financial Times (The Lex Column): InterContinental: the share price may be close to an all-time high, but it may not yet be worth stealing the bathrobes and checking out
• Financial Times (The Lex Column): MAN: prospects in Europe and Brazil, where the company is most exposed, are less encouraging and the shares look pricey
• Financial Times (The Lex Column): L’Oréal: the world’s largest cosmetics group records solid results, but there are signs that revenue growth may be faltering