Saturday Papers: Comet officially enters administration

Top stories

• The Daily Telegraph: Comet's 240 stores, which were shut yesterday to brief staff and to rearrange them for an expected firesale, reopened later, creating a window for those with vouchers from the retailer, which has officially collapsed into administration.
• The Daily Telegraph: Foreign companies, including Starbucks and Google, could be responsible for as much as £11 billion in unpaid British taxes, it has been disclosed.
• The Daily Telegraph: Royal Bank of Scotland could announce a multi-million pound settlement within months over allegations its staff attempted to manipulate Libor.
• The Daily Telegraph: US job growth accelerated last month, defying expectations that companies curb hiring because of the uncertainty building over next week's election; Companies took on 171,000 workers in October, better than the 125,000 expected, according to the widely-anticipated monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labour.
• Financial Times: Wall Street resumes drop after US jobs report; the S&P 500 fell 0.9%.
• The Guardian: Banking scion Nat Rothschild is forming a consortium to launch a counter-offer for Bumi, the mining firm he set up, in a bitter battle against the powerful Indonesian Bakrie family.

Business and economics

• The Daily Telegraph: Former fugitive Asil Nadir has been ordered to pay back £5 million of the money he stole from his Polly Peck business empire or face an extra six years in jail.
• The Daily Telegraph: Standard Chartered is close to agreeing a final settlement with US regulators over allegations that it breached anti-money laundering sanctions against Iran.
• The Daily Telegraph: Foreign companies, including Starbucks and Google, could be responsible for as much as £11 billion in unpaid British taxes, it has been disclosed.
• Daily Express: More than eight million people visited the Westfield Stratford City shopping centre during the five weeks of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
• The Daily Telegraph: Ikea, the world's largest furniture retailer, is enjoying a return to growth following a strategy of price reductions and improvements to its e-commerce operation and home delivery service.
• The Guardian: A high court judge ruled on Friday that BSkyB's Now TV does not infringe the trademark of Hong Kong-based telecoms giant PCCW, which runs a service of the same name in the territory.
• The Daily Telegraph: Waitrose is ramping up its loyalty card scheme in a new drive to grab customers from Tesco and J Sainsbury.
• Financial Times: Gold fell more than 2% to an eight-week low as stronger-than-expected employment data sent gold bulls scurrying for the exit; the spot gold price dropped below $1,680 a troy ounce for the first time since August.
• Financial Times: Och-Ziff and Fortress posted strong third-quarter profits compared with a year ago when their hedge fund businesses struggled with wild markets.
• The Daily Telegraph: Direct Line, the insurer recently spun out of RBS, has posted lower profits in the third quarter against a backdrop of a competitive market and subdued investment returns.
• Financial Times: Chevron reported a sharper than expected fall in its earnings and a drop in its production.
• The Independent: The number of companies going insolvent has fallen to its lowest level in two years, official figures show.
• Financial Times: McGraw-Hill, owner of Standard & Poor’s, has raised its guidance for the full year but saw an 11% slide in third quarter education revenues as it considered whether to spin off the division or sell it to a private equity bidder.
• Financial Times: Berkshire Hathaway’s cash pile reached almost $48 billion at the end of the third quarter, as railroad profits and a big derivative bet produced a 72% jump in third-quarter earnings.

Share tips, comment and bids

• The Daily Telegraph: Apax, BC Partners and Cinven are among the first round bidders for B&M, the fast-growth discount retailer that has been put up for sale for £850 million.
• Financial Times: Europe’s top antitrust watchdog has issued strong and deep-rooted objections to UPS’s proposed takeover of smaller Dutch rival TNT Express.
• The Independent: More than 200 jobs could be at risk at Umbro in the North-west only days after the sportswear giant Nike agreed to sell the company to the Iconix Brand Group for $225 million.
• The Daily Telegraph: Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg sold $7.44 million-worth of shares in the company when selling restrictions expired on Wednesday, it has been disclosed.
• Daily Mail (Comment): What the disastrous past tells us is that the hardest thing for RBS and other banks to regain will be the trust and confidence of the public.
• Financial Times: Alcatel-Lucent, the ailing French telecoms equipment maker, is exploring asset sales as it attempts to address worries about its liquidity.
• Financial Times: Norway’s oil fund, whose market value was $650 billion at the end of the third quarter, has moved from holding 93% of its bond portfolio in dollars, euros, yen or pounds at the end of 2010 to 84% by September.
• Financial Times: The proposed merger of Glencore and Xstrata received a lift when ISS, the shareholder advisory group closely followed by US institutional investors, backed the new terms of the $80 billion deal.
• Financial Times: Lord Ashcroft, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative party, is in talks to invest in Local World, the regional newspaper group being set up by David Montgomery, the former chief executive of Trinity Mirror.
• Financial Times (Lex): Disney – Mickey Skywalker: difficult to value the Lucasfilm deal when so much depends not on current earnings but on how well the next three ‘Star Wars’ movies do.
• Financial Times (Lex): Lloyds and RBS – the good news is that, after years of restructuring, the non-core businesses are fading from the overall picture but the underlying outlook remains grim.
• Financial Times (Lex): Oil companies – third-quarter results from the big global oil producers contain some awfully big numbers but they are often less impressive than they look.