Sunday Papers: Lloyd-Webber kicks off West End sale - tips, comment and bids

The Sunday Times

* Lord Lloyd-Webber has put one of his West End theatres up for sale less than a year after a deal to offload four of his venues fell through; The Palace is expected to interest the private-equity backed Ambassador Theatre Group and Endemol co-founder Joop van Ende's Stage Entertainment.

* Varde, a little-known American hedge fund, is on the verge of taking over Crest Nicholson, one of Britain’s leading housebuilders.

* Evolution Group is in talks to sell itself to Investec, the Anglo-South African corporate finance and wealth management firm.

* Investors in Charter International are threatening to oust the engineering company’s chairman if he fails to seal a £1.4 billion takeover by Melrose, the turnround specialist.

* Hit Entertainment is up for sale and Mattel, the American toy giant that makes Barbie, has emerged as the front-runner to buy it.

* Nova Capital, a British private equity firm, has paid £125 million to take over a handful of companies from Amalgamated Metal, the London trading group.

* Britons Carpets, one of the country’s oldest carpet manufacturers, is set to be saved from the brink by Carlyle, the American private equity group.

* Ministers will next month launch the long-awaited auction of the government’s £1 billion stake in Urenco, the company that enriches uranium for nuclear power stations.

Comment

* Economic Outlook: The place to find Plan B is Threadneedle Street - if emergency stimulus is required, it is the Bank of England — not George Osborne — who can act most effectively by using quantitative easing.

* Agenda: Bargains are out there – but when? The debt problems of 2008 have moved from companies to countries. America has an unsustainable budget deficit, as do Greece and Ireland.