Todays Newspaper round up

The Times

Headlines “Print room spread-bet scam ‘netted insider traders £1m” “Unwanted and unloved, but now Misys is a must-have”
“Glencore chief to waive his ‘unnecessary’ £1.8m bonus”  “weet deal for Jaguar could be sour for staff” 

Afghanistan is eager to convince the world that it is a place where people can make money. It will take steps towards that end tomorrow when the country’s largest oil exploration licensing round opens in London, in only the second such auction staged by the country in a decade.The Afghan Ministry of Mines hopes that the new round will attract a clutch of oil companies from Europe and the United States. It will sell licences for six large virgin blocks in the Afghan-Tajik Basin, in the northeast, which covers an area equivalent to one twentieth the size of the North Sea and contains an estimated 600 million barrels of oil. The ministry is shooting seismic imagery of the basin to give bidders more information about its reserves.

Iraqi oil production has recovered to levels that it last experienced in 1979 — the year before it went to war with Iran. Iraq is pumping more than three million barrels of oil a day for the first time in more than 30 years, a revival that could ease growing fears of a global supply crunch stoked by Iran, which have pushed crude prices to near-record levels. Hussein al-Shahristani, Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister, announced the breakthrough in Baghdad yesterday, saying that the current output compared with just below 2.7m barrels per day last year and a similar level last month.  Al-Shahristani said that a big new floating oil terminal would begin operations this week, which would boost exports by 15%. India and other countries buying Iranian crude have said that they would switch to Iraqi supplies if they became available.

The Financial Times

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is facing growing pressure to accelerate the introduction of a financial transaction tax in Europe, in order to win approval for the eurozone’s new treaty on fiscal discipline in her parliament. Both leading German opposition parties – the Social Democratic party and the Greens – are calling for action on the FTT as the price of their support for the new treaty, signed last week by 25 of the 27 European Union member states.

The Telegraph

Headlines “Glencore chief defends $109m dividend” “EU board quotas would patronise women”
Stanford jury fail to reach unanimous verdict

“Bank printing staff accused of insider trading” Seven men were accused of making more than £1m profit from trading on information they had gleaned from the high-security printing facilities within investment banks, a court heard. The alleged insider-dealing ring used secrets taken from JP Morgan Cazenove and UBS, according to the prosecution working on behalf of the Financial Services Authority. The individuals traded in shares in companies including Biffa, Reuters, Premier Oil, Vega and Enodis over a two-year period between 2006 and 2008, the jury at Southwark Crown Court was told. Two brothers, Ersin and Ali Mustafa, working within the printing rooms of JP Morgan Cazenove and UBS, respectively, were accused of supplying the information to co-conspirators who traded on the tips.

The Guardian

“Dutch Freedom Party pushes euro exit amid €1.8 trillion rescue bill” Geert Wilders leader of The Dutch Freedom Party has called for a return to the Guilder, becoming the first political movement in the Eurozone with a large popular base to opt for withdrawal from the single currency. “The euro is not in the interests of the Dutch people,” said Geert Wilders, the leader of the right-wing populist party with a sixth of the seats in the Dutch parliament. “We want to be the master of our own house and our own country, so we say yes to the guilder. Bring it on.” Mr Wilders made his decision after receiving a report by London-based Lombard Street Research concluding that the Netherlands is badly handicapped by euro membership, and that it could cost EMU’s creditor core more than €2.4trn to hold monetary union together over the next four years.

The Scotsman

STV & ITV yesterday struck a “milestone” agreement on groundbreaking new networking arrangements that are seen as formally drawing a line under their lengthy litigation. Under the deal, STV will become an affiliate of the Channel 3 network, allowing the Scottish company to pay back a legal settlement balance of £10.8m to ITV in programme stock and cash over the next 18 months. Sources said the payment would mainly be in programmes, thereby strengthening STV’s balance sheet. Agreement in principle had been reached last summer between the warring parties, which had previously each claimed under the historic networking agreement that they were effectively subsidising the other in programming costs.

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