Oil major BP has put its US wind-power unit up for sale as it continues to pull back from renewable energy and turn to its core oil and gas business, according to the Financial Times. The paper says that its wind-power operations in the States could be worth 1.5bn pounds.
Ahead of the planned flotation of RBS’s Citizens unit, the bank is said to have appointed its Finance Director Bruce van Saun as the head of the US arm, writes The Independent. The move is understood to happen in the next few weeks and will see former Abbey National Finance Director Nathan Bostock succeed van Saun, the paper says.
According to The Times, the exit of Stobart’s Chairwoman after only 71 days on the job could signal the start of a ‘private future’. The paper writes: “Sources last night said that the breakdown between the trucking group and the City could result in the logistics-based conglomerate being taken private and leaving the stock market.”
The price of non-food items, such as clothing, electricals and beauty products, rose at a 0.2% annual rate in March, the first rise in 15 months, reports The Telegraph. This “provid[es] an early sign of a revival in the retail sector and a potential boost for the British economy”, the paper says.
The government has introduced statutory regulation for LIBOR for the first time after banks were found to attempted to rig the key benchmark rate, reports The Guardian. From this summer, the rates that banks submit to the LIBOR panel will be published with a three-month delay. It is also said that the number of LIBOR currencies and borrowing periods could be cut.
The Chief Executive Officer of Standard Life, David Nish, received £5.0m in pay in 2012, “an amount of money likely to irritate the insurer’s army of small shareholders and keep the hot issue of executive pay in the spotlight”, according to The Independent.
