THE INDEPENDENT
Lots of headlines from the Indie today a flavour of which are these. “Cable begs US bosses not to shut UK car plant” “Anger as Lloyds pays new finance chief £6m” while the paper reports that Indian group Tata has triggered a £1bn bid battle for CWW
The Daily Mail
The coalition’s Business Secretary Vince Cable made a flying visit to meet General Motors bosses in New York in an attempt to save more than 2,000 jobs at Vauxhall’s threatened UK factory in Ellesmere Port. He flew to the USA on Tuesday night to meet late Wednesday with General Motors chairman and chief executive officer Dan Akerson and the car giant’s corporate strategy vice chairman Stephen Girsky to put the case for keeping the Cheshire car plant open, the Mail has learned. The crisis talks came hours after GM announced a new cost-cutting alliance with French rivals PSA Peugeot Citroen which aims to save $2bn over the next five years, intensifying fears about the future of the UK’s Ellesmere Port factory and two plants in Germany, Bochum and Eisenach. So says The Mail.
The Telegraph
“Osborne must abandon folly of 50p tax’ “
“China claims world’s biggest shale gas reserves”
“Insider trading raids across Europe” German prosecutors launched 86 raids on properties across Europe on Tuesday as part of an investigation into “insider trading” and market manipulation. The far-reaching raids are connected to suspected inflation of penny stock prices by media publications. Prosecutors believe suspects could have manipulated share prices by withholding information or publishing false claims. A spokesman for the Munich prosecutors reportedly told Bloomberg: “We are looking into allegations that share prices may have been manipulated by using publications. Because that case is pending, we can’t say more now. We are just at the beginning.” The raids come after authorities earlier this year successfully prosecuted several individuals in connection with a newsletter targeted at small investors.
Lord Sassoon has emerged as a potential successor to Sir Mervyn King when he steps down as Governor of the Bank of England in June next year. Although the Chancellor has yet to begin the official selection process, a decision is expected by the end of the year. Paul Tucker, one of the Bank’s two deputies, is still considered the frontrunner but George Osborne is said to be keen on an external candidate – with the Tory peer thought to be a strong contender. Lord Sassoon, the commercial secretary to the Treasury, has been named in a new book, The Bank: Inside the Bank of England, by Dan Conaghan, a corporate financier and former Telegraph journalist. “His name crops up with regularity, particularly among Bank insiders. He is close to the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and to Matthew Hancock MP, the Chancellor’s right-hand man,”
While The Telegraph also writes. “European powers have approved the release of funds for Greece’s international creditors but have delayed the decision to bail out Athens until March 12, which is perilously close to the country’s default deadline. Ministers released €58bn of cash designated to smooth the €206bn bond restructuring but have withheld the remaining €71.5bn allocated to help the ailing Greek government. Eurozone finance ministers, who met in Brussels ahead of European Union leaders summit on Thursday night, said they would hold a conference call on Friday, March 9 (the day after the bond swap deadline) and postpone a decision until the Eurogroup meeting on Monday, March 12. The delay will push Greece to within eight days of bankruptcy – a move that will rattle global markets and put Eurozone leaders on a collision course with America and China.”
The Times
Yesterday Russia signalled a dramatic shift in its policy towards Syria, insisting that it had no special relationship with President Assad and that it was up to the Syrians to decide who should rule their country. Speaking on the eve of his likely return to the Kremlin as President, Vladimir Putin said that Moscow was concerned about the appalling human rights situation in Syrian cities such as Homs. “It is up to the Syrians to decide who should run their country,” Prime Minister Putin told newspapers in a wide-ranging interview at his dacha outside Moscow. “We need to make sure they stop killing each other.”
“Superjumbo wing cracks a design fault” Wing cracks that grounded the Airbus 380 superjumbo have been identified as the fault of design engineers at the manufacturer’s state-of-the-art facility at Filton near Bristol. The entire fleet of the double-decker A380s is to be called in to have the wings overhauled after inspections found cracks of up to 2mm in key components in every one of the 69 aircraft in service. The issue, which is causing serious tensions between Airbus and it customers (especially Singapore Airlines, which has the oldest A380s )could cost the manufacturer €100m in compensation payments. While The Times also writes that “Euro leaders have delayed half of Greece’s funds “
