Saturday Papers: Northern Rock cash used to fund deal

Top stories

• Financial Times: A third of the £747 million cash price that Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Money is paying to buy Northern Rock will be funded from the state-owned bank’s current capital base, the Financial Times has discovered.
• The Guardian: European Central Bank president Mario Draghi has called for eurozone member states to speed up implementation of the bloc's existing rescue fund.
• The Guardian: Camelot's sales surged 19.9% to £3.26 billion for the six months to 24 September fueled by national lottery instant-play games; the lottery operator now looks on track to report full-year sales of more than £6 billion.
• Daily Mail: UK pensions minister Steve Webb admits pensioners might have to take a hit for greater good of boosting the economy.
• Daily Express: Lloyds Banking Group shares slipped to a new 32-month low yesterday amid mounting speculation the bank is lining up a contingency plan to replace chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio, who is off sick.
• Financial Times: Plans for an airport in the Thames estuary have won political backing in Downing Street and the Treasury as a visionary way to solve Britain’s aviation capacity crunch.
• Financial Times: A stronger euro and a decline in Italian bond yields helped European stocks pare losses but Wall Street slipped slightly as eurozone sovereign debt issues continued to drive investor sentiment.
• The Independent: Cobham, the aerospace electronics business, became the second listed company this month to lose a chief executive on health grounds, as a 'long-term serious back injury' forced Andy Stevens to step down.

Business and economics

• Financial Times: Chemring’s shares fell almost 15% on Friday to their lowest level in more than two years, after the military equipment maker warned on profits because of an unexpected delay to a contract.
• The Guardian: BSkyB is to appoint Matthieu Pigasse, controlling shareholder of Le Monde and the French edition of Huffington Post, and Aberdeen Asset Management founder Martin Gilbert as independent board directors.
• Financial Times: Shares in 3Legs Resources tumbled 41.2% to 80p this week after it suspended tests at a well in the Baltic basin of Poland for a period expected to be several months.
• The Guardian: Disparity in executive pay and shopfloor wages will reach a level not seen since 1900, the high pay commission reports.
• Financial Times: Shares in MWB Group neared their lowest point for the year after the boutique hotel operator said revenues had fallen more than expected.
• Financial Times: Vijay Mallya said he was finalising a $250 million equity infusion to recapitalise his cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines; he added he would soon sign two deals with a consortium of banks to provide the airline with Rs 6 billion ($120 million) in working capital.
• The Daily Telegraph: While Tullett Prebon reported an 8% rise in revenues to £315 million for the four months to the end of October, Collins Stewart said its revenues for the same period had fallen 16% year-on-year to £63 million.
• The Daily Telegraph: Evolution, which is set to be taken over by South African financial group Investec, said in its own trading update that its investment banking business would be loss-making this year; it added that it would cut 60 staff.
• The Daily Telegraph: Andrew Wade, the broker's retail analyst, slashed his rating on SuperGroup on Friday to 'sell' from 'buy', citing unease about the chain's Superdry brand.
• The Daily Telegraph: The directors of some of Britain's best known companies have used the eurozone debt crisis as an opportunity to buy shares in their companies at depressed prices.
• The Daily Telegraph: The Guardian News & Media has launched a review of its printing operations in Manchester and Stratford, as it seeks to stem pre-tax losses of £43.8 million a year.
• The Daily Telegraph: Financier Nathaniel Rothschild is expected to be given about £180 million in shares in Genel Energy over the next four years, after the Turkish oil company completes its reversal into his Vallares cash shell.
• The Daily Telegraph: The administrators of MF Global's London-based business have begun to see the first return of funds to the collapsed broker since its bankruptcy just over two weeks ago.
• Daily Mail: Buy-to-let mortgage lending has soared by 10 times since last year as the rental market continues to boom, Platform, the dedicated intermediary lender of the Co-operative Bank, has revealed.
• Daily Mail: Former BP boss Tony Hayward could bag a £3 million pay-plus-shares package in his first year in charge of new Kurdistan-focused venture Genel Energy.
• Financial Times: The market for credit default swaps on sovereign bonds should be 'closed down' if investors cannot be guaranteed the pay-outs they are entitled to in the case of a default, says the chief executive of Commerzbank.
• Financial Times: Jack Wills, the fast-growing youth fashion brand, is set to open its first stores in Asia.
• Financial Times: Alliance Trust’s net assets fell 7.5% in the third quarter, the UK’s biggest investment trust said on Friday.
• Financial Times: Catlin, the London-based reinsurer, has struck a deal to manage a new syndicate at Lloyd’s of London on behalf of China Reinsurance, the country’s largest reinsurer.
• Financial Times: Denis O’Brien, the largest shareholder in Ireland’s Independent News & Media, has called for the removal of chief executive Gavin O’Reilly following the publisher’s second profit warning within three months.
• Financial Times: The US oil price rose above $100 for the first time in four months this week on pipeline glitch.

Share tips, comment and bids

• Financial Times: Rio Tinto has raised its bid for Hathor Exploration, a small Canadian uranium developer, in what has become a bidding war with Toronto-listed Cameco.
• Financial Times: Shares in Hamworthy leapt 20% on Friday after Wartsila, a Finnish marine engineering group, said it was in advanced talks to buy its British rival for £375 million.
• Daily Express: Virgin Money is plotting a stock market float as part of a major drive to shake up UK high-street banking after it won the bidding battle to buy nationalised Northern Rock.
• Financial Times: Volkswagen came under pressure on two fronts on Friday as Suzuki demanded arbitration to end a soured strategic partnership and EU competition authorities prepared a fresh assault on a contentious German law that protects Europe’s biggest carmaker by sales from takeover.
• Financial Times: Nathan Kirsh, the South African property investor, is set to become the new owner of Tower 42, the tallest occupied skyscraper in the City and former headquarters of NatWest Bank.
• The Independent: Princes has sold the canned pie maker Fray Bentos to the Scottish soup group, Baxters.
• The Guardian (Comment): If coalition rhetoric is to be believed, the UK is full of optimism. The reality: people are working unpaid in Poundland.
• The Daily Telegraph (Comment): Eurozone bond yields show UK is right on euro - French and German politicians are becoming increasingly indignant over what they see as British lecturing about the eurozone crisis.
• Daily Mail (Comment): Until Berlin, and the Frankfurt-based Bundesbank, give the ECB its freedom the euroland crisis will simply carry on contaminating the global economy.
• Daily Mail (Comment): Citi, which owns EMI, and Britain (where it belongs) have chosen the wrong moment to sell the music company.
• Daily Mail (Investment Extra): Shares in the Kurdistan-focused oil explorers have spiked sharply in the past week after the first of the super-majors made its move into the semi-autonomous region of Northern Iraq.
• Daily Mail (Comment): As the chancellor is fast learning, owning banks is one of the quickest ways to burn through your riches. This week George Osborne sold off the healthy parts of Northern Rock in the first privatisation of taxpayer-owned financial assets since the crash.
• Financial Times (Lex): Salesforce.com – looking at sales of the provider of customer relationship software, the only thing visible is momentum, but it needs to prove that it can control costs before sales slow.
• Financial Times (Lex): Risk-on/risk-off markets – this is a terrible time for the stockpicker as the eurozone crisis drags on.
• Financial Times (Lex): Hungary: amateur hour – surprise decision on ‘insurance’ agreement with the International Monetary Fund is odd on many levels.