Thursday Papers: Italian debt meltdown hits investor confidence in eurozone

Top stories

• The Daily Telegraph: Investor confidence in the eurozone collapsed on Wednesday, propelling Italy to the brink of a bail-out and pushing Spanish and French borrowing costs to record levels.
• The Independent: HSBC yesterday made its most explicit threat yet that it is prepared to quit the UK if the Government adopts the Independent Commission on Banking's (ICB) proposed reforms in full.
• Financial Times: Nat Rothschild has criticised the management and corporate governance at the Indonesian coal company BT Bumi, which he is trying to transform into a top-tier global miner.
• The Independent: A Dubai-based private investor was yesterday hit with a $9.62 million penalty by the City watchdog, the largest it has yet levied against an individual for market abuse.
• The Daily Telegraph: Adobe Systems is cutting 750 jobs in Europe and North America as it stops developing its Flash software for mobile devices.
• The Daily Telegraph: Anglo American, the mining giant, has sold a 24.5% stake in its south Chilean copper mines to Mitsubishi Corporation for $5.39 billion, valuing its Anglo American Sur assets at $22 billion.
• Daily Express: HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver yesterday warned of mounting global fears the eurozone debt crisis might go “terribly wrong” sparking a “deep recession” that would hit the world economy.

Business and economics

• The Daily Telegraph: Moody's said yesterday Lloyds Banking Group's debt could face a downgrade in the wake of Mr Horta-Osorio's temporary absence.
• Financial Times: HSBC reported a $1 billion quarter-on-quarter jump in loan impairments, largely of to a sudden increase in US home loan losses.
• The Independent: The UK's deficit in goods and services in September was £3.9 billion, up from £2.7 billion in August.
• The Independent: Yahoo is joining forces with rivals AOL and Microsoft in an attempt to halt the rise of Google and Facebook in online display advertising.
• The Independent: Commodities investors who did business through MF Global have been warned they may not get back all the money they had in their accounts with the company.
• Daily Mail: SuperGroup, the fashion chain behind the popular SuperDry and Cult labels, said the warehouse problems that had left some shelves bare in its stores were now behind it.
• Daily Mail: Nationwide has launched a new reward scheme for debit and credit card customers giving them access to discounts of up to 50% with selected retailers.
• Daily Express: Sainsbury’s yesterday said moves to help customers cope with tighter budgets and a strong grip on costs were paying off in the face of a “challenging environment”.
• Daily Express: Regional airline Flybe warned of a tough winter yesterday as cash-conscious fliers stay at home to “rebalance their books” rather than take to the skies.
• The Guardian: PricewaterhouseCoopers' financial stress index shows London little hurt by the downturn against growing misery in Wales, the West Midlands and northern regions.
• The Guardian: London Inter-Bank Offered Rate, a key measure of tension in the financial system, reaches 1%.
• The Guardian: General Motors has stayed in profit for its seventh consecutive quarter, but said rising costs and European problems were dragging the company down.
• Financial Times: Rupert Murdoch will take over as chairman of News Corp's Australian operations after Wednesday's resignation of John Hartigan, long-time chairman and chief executive of News Limited.
• Financial Times: Goldman Sachs is paring its stake in Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, hoping to raise about $1.5 billion by selling more than 2 billion shares in the lender.
• Financial Times: The Chinese government is investigating China Telecom and China Unicom, the country’s two main fixed-line carriers, over claims that they behaved like monopolies.

Share tips, comment and bids

• The Independent: Kesa Electricals has sold Comet to the private investment firm OpCapita for a nominal fee of just £2.
• Financial Times: A stock-market listed company, Circle Healthcare, will take over an NHS hospital for the first time; the John Lewis-style partnership with a market cap of about £120 million, will manage the debt-laden Hinchingbrooke hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, from February.
• Financial Times: Arbuthnot Banking has agreed to sell its investment banking business to Westhouse.
• Financial Times: May Gurney, the infrastructure support specialist, has bought TransLinc, one of the biggest providers of transport for local authorities, for £34.9 million in cash.
• Financial Times: The German government will buy a 7.5% stake in EADS, the European aerospace and defence group, to enable carmaker Daimler to cut its 15% stake in the Airbus-parent while maintaining German influence.
• The Independent (Comment): Best of luck to OpCapita, the new owner of the Comet electricals chain. It is certainly going to need it.
• The Independent (Comment): New figures from the British Bankers' Association yesterday appear to undermine the argument that Britain's banks are holding back the recovery by refusing to lend to business.
• The Independent (Comment): Admiral, the car insurer that shocked the market yesterday with results mired by the cost of personal-injury claims, has an odd take on the debate about reforming the law.
• The Daily Telegraph (Comment):: As a monetary experiment the euro has failed. It's a laboratory creature staggering around being kept alive, just, by an intravenous drip of political willpower.
• Financial Times (Lex): GM Europe could be marginally profitable in 2012 and recent gains in market share offer a glimmer of hope. It is better off at least than some more Eurocentric competitors.
• Financial Times (Lex): Adobe: pragmatic rebuilding - major changes entail execution risk, but sometimes a hard reboot is the only way to get the system running smoothly again.
• Financial Times (Lex): HSBC: radical fixes are needed - the trick for investors will be peering through weakness caused by Europe, low rates and regulatory pressures, for signs of underlying improvement.
• Financial Times (Lex): Corporate bonds: that shrinking feeling - this credit crisis could yet be more dangerous than companies have experience so far.
• Financial Times (Lex): Deutsche Post: letter-perfect - Europe’s biggest mail and express delivery group was even beating expectations, with plenty of room for some outperformance.