Friday Papers: Blackstone takes on £1.4bn of RBS debt - tips, comment and bids

Financial Times

* Royal Bank of Scotland is to offload £1.4 billion of high-risk UK commercial property loans into a structure controlled by Blackstone.

* India has finally approved Vedanta Resources to take over Cairn Energy’s prized India assets, nearly 11 months after the two companies first announced plans for the $9.6 billion deal.

* Barclays has sold a $740 million portfolio of private equity fund investments to Axa Private Equity.

* CWT, a Singapore-listed logistics group, is to buy a majority stake in a metals trading house set up by Marc Rich, the founder of Glencore.

* Zygmunt Solorz-Zak, a Polish media tycoon, has finalised a €4.5 billion deal to buy Polkomtel, Poland’s second-largest mobile phone operator. 

* In a highly unusual move, the Takeover Panel stepped in to allow shareholders embroiled in the tortuous battle over Rank to wait and see what the acceptances were for an offer for Rank before making a final decision to reject or accept it.

The Lex Column

* Social networks: matter of time - News Corp might have had its fingers burnt in its acquisition and offloading of MySpace but doing something was better than doing nothing at all.

* BG Group: fertile fields - estimated size of the energy group’s offshore pre-salt reserves – hydrocarbons deep under the seabed) – just keeps on growing.