Newspaper Briefing, including George Osborne set to split banks to safeguard ...

Newspaper Briefing informs you of what is happening in the news before the market opens. We believe our Newspaper Briefing is an invaluable tool to set up your trading day, therefore giving you an edge. Our Newspaper Briefing is just the start of our trading day at Guardian. We work with our clients to provide them with information and guidance to enhance their trading decisions. Guardian will provide you with an individual service together with the most suitable and expert advice at a fair and reasonable cost. Rumour of the Day: Merger talks between Scottish Power’s Spanish Owner Iberdrola, and RWE of Germany are said to be back on. The utilities ended talks in February but, according to one source, resumed at the end May. The accelerated nuclear shutdown in Germany and pressure on Iberdrola by rebel shareholder ACS in Spain, make a deal more attractive for both. Deal of the day: Alastair Imrie, BAE Systems’ Human Resources Director, has chosen his moment to take profits in the weapons maker. He sold almost 88,000 shares for £276,000 and exercised options on another 44,000 shares before selling them for 315½p, netting another £140,000. Shares in the defence company are down 8% on the month. Gilts: U.K. government bonds fell for a second day as encouraging Chinese data and American retail sales gigures slightly firmer than forecast boosted equities and other growth-oriented assets. September gilt futures settled 39 ticks lower at 120.61, while Bund futures shed just over 50 ticks. The yield on 10-year gilts rose 4 basis points to 3.295%. George Osborne set to split banks to safeguard the taxpayer: The Chancellor will use his annual Mansion House speech to back plans for British banks to split their high street branches from their riskier investment divisions to protect taxpayers from another financial crisis. George Osborne will also put banks on notice that they will have to hold much more capital than their international competitors. Nokia takes chunk out of iPhone profits as Apple backs down: Nokia will take a cut of the profit made on every iPhone sold after reaching a multimillion-dollar settlement with Apple to end a patent infringement dispute. Apple has agreed to pay an undisclosed one-off sum to Nokia, then ongoing royalty payments. The deal provides a much-needed boost to the struggling company, which issued a profit warning recently, while it continues to try to catch up with rivals in the smartphone market. MG Rover adviser on Southern Cross case: The Government’s heavyweight corporate finance unit has been drafted in to provide specialist advice in crunch meeting to decide the future of the troubled care home operator Southern Cross. Mark Russell is the deputy Chief Executive of the Shareholder Executive — effectively the Government’s investment banking arm — and is best known for his role advising on how to save the carmaker MG Rover. ENRC co-founder comes out fighting: The billionaire at the centre of the Eurasian Natural Resources scandal has rejected the allegation that the company is “more Soviet than City” in an extraordinary statement on his personal website. As first reported by The Times, the miner’s corporate governance descended into acrimony and infighting, that led to the departure of two of its Directors, Ken Olisa and Sir Richard Sykes. Glencore cashes in on transatlantic oil price divide: A divergence in the way that oil is priced around the world enabled Glencore International to more than double profits from its oil trading division in the first quarter. The world’s largest commodities trader has taken advantage of a mismatch in the price of oil to ship cargos to the most lucrative markets. Watchdog hammers trader who beat City bookies: A day trader who thought he had devised a brilliant system for outwitting bookmakers was ordered to pay £1 million in fines and compensation and was banned from the City for five years. Barney Alexander claimed that he had been legally exploiting imperfections in the way in which financial bookmakers priced their spread bets to make as much as £4,000 profits a day. Marriott property fund fails: A property portfolio comprising 42 Marriott hotels throughout Britain has fallen into receivership after the collapse of a financial restructuring deal. Royal Bank of Scotland, which holds the bulk of the £900 million of debt borrowed against the assets, called in administrative receivers from Ernst & Young, who have appointed a new board pending a disposal of the portfolio. Boeing’s right to work: Precisely a century and a half after 24 Union and 11 Confederate states nearly tore America apart over issues of economics and personal liberty a new debate is heating up along eerily similar geographic lines. At first glance it is hard to see a battle over the location of a Boeing plant being waged by bureaucrats and lawyers as having remotely similar import, but pro and anti labour union forces are portraying it as a fight for economic justice. At the very least it is becoming a significant campaign issue. America’s 22 “right to work” states, located mainly in the South, have seen three times the manufacturing growth of the other 28 states in the past several years. Boeing’s decision to open a new plant in union-unfriendly South Carolina rather than its main hub in Washington was another in this string of victories until the National Labour Relations Board, a body of political appointees that can act as both prosecutor and judge, sought to block the move. With the plant nearly complete and 1,000 workers already hired, livid politicians in South Carolina are turning the hearing into an ideological showdown with the Obama administration, which they see as sympathetic to the suit. Phosagro: Russian IPO hopeful: Russian fertiliser company Phosagro will try its luck with an initial public offering to raise $500 million in London and Moscow next month. That is half what Europe’s largest phosphate-based fertiliser producer hoped for when it first revealed its IPO plan in April last year. But capital raising is not the real objective. With net debt of less than one times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, its leverage is manageable. Instead, Phosagro says it needs an acquisition currency. Fair enough. Much has changed in the past year: global sector consolidation has accelerated, in line with the excitement around agricultural commodities. Brazil’s Vale paid $3.8 billion for Bunge’s integrated Brazilian fertiliser producer last year. Meanwhile, last year’s failed hostile $39 billion cash bid for PotashCorp by BHP Billiton was bang on the trend. Phosagro was even, fleetingly, touted as a counter-bidder. But PotashCorp’s market capitalisation is now nearly $46.5 billion, dwarfing retained broker Renaissance Capital’s valuation of $7 billion-$9 billion for Phosagro. Avis: life in the fast lane: If only the gormless twits behind car rental counters moved as sharply as the industry itself these days. Just a month after Hertz raised its offer for Dollar Thrifty in the ongoing bidding war with Avis Budget, Avis Budget announced on Tuesday an agreed purchase of Avis Europe for £3.15 a share in cash. It is hard to keep up. The suspicion is that after almost collapsing a couple of years ago, the sector is now in a rush to make the most out of the financial crisis. And why not? Already a new management team at Dollar Thrifty has taken its share price from under a buck two years ago to $72. Avis Budget’s offer for the bit of itself that broke away in 1986 is admittedly a 60% premium to the London traded share price on Monday. But Avis Europe was twice as high again only four years ago. What is more, taxing and capitalising the touted synergies between the two companies of $30 million a year roughly equals the premium. Even more cost savings should be expected. Governance learnings of U.K. for make benefit ENRC: Alexander Mashkevich, 15% shareholder in Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation, is angry. Independent Director Ken Olisa – ousted with colleague Sir Richard Sykes last week – described the Kazakh miner as “More Soviet than City”. Slick quip. But to compare governance failings that included sloppily-run board meetings with a regime that slaughtered millions is to poke an ex-Soviet businessman in a very sore spot. Mr Mashkevich’s riposte to Mr Olisa is accordingly entitled “More City than Soviet”. This portrays the deterioration of boardroom relations into factionalism, epistolary feuding and leaks to the press. As a result, Mr Mashkevich appears less of a Machiavellian oligarch and more the incredulous shareholder, watching the slo-mo meltdown through the gaps between his fingers. However, his testimony has gaps of its own. The Israeli entrepreneur does not, for example, say why a bloc of shareholders of which he is a member chose Sir Richard Sykes and Mr Olisa for ejection. Nor can the board have been dysfunctional solely because it was too big, as Mr Mashkevich suggests. Yet the businessman neglects to reflect that Johannes Sittard, the Chief Executive who stepped up to the Chairmanship, bears automatic responsibility. Frosted Glasenberg: It is usual for recently floated companies to announce strong results, as Glencore has just done. Strong trading emboldens them to hazard the public market in the first place. But for the glass-half-empty brigade there was room for carping despite a 47% net profit increase over the first quarter from the commodities trader. Underlying earnings fell $68 million from trading metals and minerals. Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg said there had been fewer arbitrage opportunities. That underlined the opacity of this investment bank-like part of Glencore’s business. Just as well that energy trading profits jumped $197 million. A swift and filthy extrapolation from first quarter group earnings of $2 billion puts Glencore on a share price multiple of around 7 times. Bank of Gran and Grandpa: Care home landlords are demanding that the government participates in the rescue of Southern Cross. Private Equity Investors and Erstwhile Directors have been blamed for the group’s woes. But penny-pinching local authorities – and, indirectly HM Treasury – are responsible too, having used private homes as a low-cost outsourcing option, latterly neglected in favour of domiciliary care. It would thus be right for the government to support the rescue through the deferral or write-off of £20 million in tax. De La Rue Boss can claim £113,000 golden goodbye if firm is taken over: Tim Cobbold negotiated a potential “golden goodbye” clause when he took over as Chief Executive at banknote printer De La Rue in January. The former Boss of power systems group Chloride joined De La Rue, which prints notes for the Bank of England and 150 other countries, at a time when it was fighting off what it called a “highly opportunistic” bid from French rival Oberthur. Boiler room scam victory: The City watchdog has won its first criminal conviction for “boiler room fraud” in a breakthrough against a scam it called “a major menace”. David Mason was sentenced to two years in prison and banned from being a Director for six years for a rip-off that saw 32 victims conned out of £270,000. Strike fear as 43,000 postal staff axed by £500,000-a-year Boss: The Royal Mail unveiled huge job losses as its Chief Executive was revealed to be earning more than three times the Prime Minister’s salary. Moya Greene, who took over the loss-making group last July, admitted she was “very well paid” with a basic salary of £498,000 a year. George Osborne to reveal plans for major shake-up of banking: The Chancellor George Osborne will announce the biggest shake-up of banking in a generation as he forces the big high street names to separate their retail and casino operations. In his annual Mansion House speech, the Chancellor will say that he has accepted the key recommendations of the interim report, drawn up by the commission led by Sir John Vickers, which will force banks to make their retail operations "bulletproof". John Swinney puts pressure on power giant as it agrees to £10 million scheme: Under-fire energy giant ScottishPower and the Scottish Government have agreed to work together on a £10 million campaign to improve household energy efficiency after finance secretary John Swinney  presided over a high-level meeting to discuss the firm's recent inflation-busting price hikes. ScottishPower's UK retail director, Raymond Jack, and Chief Executive for generation, John Campbell, were summoned to talks after the firm earlier this month raised the average yearly household bill for both electricity and gas to just under £1,400. Branches are what customers want: Branch-based banking remains popular with consumers despite the growth of online accounts and a decline in the number of high street branches, it has been claimed. Almost seven in ten Yorkshire Building Society customers favour the traditional branch network when managing their savings, citing convenience and personal customer service, a survey by the mutual has revealed. Internet to the rescue: web tools can help plug the cash leaks: Families and couples trying to get their finances on the right track can take advantage of the emergence of web-based services aimed at making money management more simple. The government-backed Money Advice Service last week launched an online healthcheck – at www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/healthcheck - which features an action plan to help people stay on top of their money and plan to meet future goals. Oil prices hit profits at Interbulk: Logistics company Interbulk, in which engineering entrepreneur Jim McColl holds a 5% stake, admitted that rising oil prices had held back profit growth. The East Kilbride-based firm posted a 16% rise in sales during the six months to 31 March to £146.2 million but said operating profits had only nudged up from £7.3 million to £7.5 million. Yet interim pre-tax profits surged from £558,000 to £1.9 million after it cut the interest payments on its debt by £1.3 million. Swire to spend £20 million in Aberdeen: Swire Oilfield Services unveiled plans to pump £20 million into its operations in Aberdeen as part of a £50 million global expansion. According to the firm, the cash will bring 20 jobs to Aberdeen and pay for new headquarters in the city's Altens area, construction of which will begin in July next year. Farm ministers in tandem to put UK case over sheep tags: NFU Scotland last night praised the efforts of UK farm ministers in going to Brussels to fight against the proposed 100% accuracy requirement on sheep identification. Speaking after meeting health commissioner John Dalli, the UK agriculture minister, Jim Paice, and Scotland's secretary for rural affairs and the environment Richard Lochhead, claimed it has been a "constructive discussion." £120 million sale is just the ticket on Saturday, or any day: One of the largest ticket sellers in Europe is understood to be on the verge of being sold for up to £120 million by its private equity owner. See Tickets - which sells seats at concerts by the Saturdays, KT Tunstall and Simple Minds - has been put up for sale by Parcom Capital, part of Dutch banking giant ING. Tesco sees sales dip as sign of UK consumers tightening pursestrings: Tesco saw sales at its established UK stores drop for a second quarter in a row as hard-pressed consumers were forced to spend their money on increasingly expensive fuel. Excluding fuel and VAT, the UK's largest supermarket posted a 0.1% year-on-year drop in same-store sales in the 13 weeks to 28 May, an improvement on the 0.7% fall in the previous quarter. Big Box on hold as Carphone mulls plans: Carphone Warehouse delayed a decision on the next steps for its loss-making consumer electronics megastores until the autumn, as it begins to question the wisdom of expanding while consumer demand slides. Best Buy UK, which operates ten Big Box-branded stores, reported an underlying loss of £62 million in the year to 31 March, compared with £21 million during the previous 12 months. Ted Baker streets ahead as Q1 sales leap 15%: Strong demand in Asia and the Middle East helped fashion designer Ted Baker to post a 15.2% jump in first-quarter sales. The company - which makes a variety of clothes ranging from men's suits to women's lingerie - bucked the downbeat mood on the UK high street to report a 9.4% sales rise from its shops and a 42.1% leap in its wholesale business.

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