Tuesday Papers: Lending plan ‘put on steroids’

Top stories

• Financial Times: The Funding for Lending Scheme is expected to be extended and “put on steroids”, in an admission from the coalition that its flagship credit creation programme is failing small businesses.
• Financial Times: Billionaire John Paulson has explored abandoning his native New York for the tropics of Puerto Rico as he tries to shield his fortune from US tax collectors.
• Financial Times: John Delaney, the founder of Intrade, received $2.6 million in insufficiently documented payments from the popular prediction markets company in 2010 and 2011, an audit revealed weeks before trading on the site was halted.
• The Daily Telegraph: The department store chain John Lewis - praised by the Government as a model British business - has been accused of "abusing" its supply chain by demanding a rebate from suppliers enjoying an increase in sales.
• Financial Times: Private equity groups are lining up bids for Commerzbank’s UK property business in a potential £5 billion deal that would mark a significant disposal from the German government-backed lender.
• Financial Times: Lloyds Banking Group is set to cash in on the record share price of St James’s Place by selling at least a third of its majority holding in the FTSE 250 wealth manager, raising more than £500 million.
• The Daily Telegraph: Dell will let Carl Icahn review its books as the billionaire investor tries to scupper the struggling PC maker's $24 billion plan to sell itself to founder Michael Dell.
• The Independent: Online gambling group 888 has set up a joint venture with the $12 billion Avenue Capital investment group to launch online gambling in the United States.
• The Guardian: Production has resumed on the Elgin North Sea gas platform almost a year after it was evacuated due to a major leak; the shutdown cost operator Total millions of pounds in lost income.
• The Daily Telegraph: Vodafone has launched a fightback against the Yahoo! chief executive who banned working from home, insisting that the practice encourages “smarter”, more cost-effective ways of working and results in savings of up to £34 billion a year for companies.
• Financial Times: Temasek, BlackRock and Capital Research and Management are among 15 global investors signed up to buy one-third of the $1.36 billion share sale in Indonesian retailer Matahari, highlighting the demand for exposure to the country’s consumers.
• Financial Times: General Electric aims to double its sales in sub-Saharan Africa during the next few years, its chief executive Jeff Immelt has said, in the latest sign of international companies’ growing interest in the region.

Business and economics

• The Guardian: Employers need to create 850,000 extra jobs to reach the pre-recession peak, according to an in-depth report by Resolution Foundation that undermines claims the jobs market has defied the recession.
• Financial Times: The Mexican government on Monday announced a sweeping proposal to limit the reach of telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim and broadcasting giant Televisa as part of efforts to boost competition in Latin America’s second-biggest economy.
• Daily Mail: Airline bosses are trying to arrange a pre-Budget meeting with George Osborne in the belief they can convince him to scrap aviation taxes they say damage the economy.
• The Guardian: France appears to be heading for a triple dip recession amid concerns that political deadlock in Italy could drag the eurozone back into crisis.
• The Guardian: Property transactions in the UK reached their highest level in two and a half years as house buyers took advantage of record low interest rates, according to a survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
• Financial Times: Koji Ishida, a board member at the Bank of Japan, has described the bank’s 2% inflation target as “very high”, in a sign of possible friction with the stance of Haruhiko Kuroda, the government’s pick for the next central bank governor.
• Financial Times: Bank of England officials, who developed the Funding for Lending Scheme in tandem with the Treasury, have become increasingly concerned by the lack of lending to small businesses.
• The Guardian: Pending environmental regulations that will force ferry operators to cut sulphur emissions will raise their costs by about 30%, raising fears of mass job losses.
• Financial Times: Google’s new £1 billion European headquarters in King’s Cross, London, will be built by the Dutch company Bam Construct, which has fought off rival bids from Carillion, Skanska and Balfour Beatty.
• The Guardian: International Airlines Group moved closer to agreeing mass job cuts at its Spanish arm Iberia after accepting a compromise proposal put forward by a government-appointed mediator which would save 666 jobs.
• The Guardian: Online gambling group Intrade has ceased taking bets after launching an investigation into potential "financial irregularities".
• Financial Times: Richard Joseph, 43, a former futures trader, has been sentenced to four years in jail for an insider-trading scheme that netted him £591,117 in profit.
• The Guardian: Construction company JCB has secured a £40 million order from the Brazilian government for more than 1,000 backhoe loaders, the world-renowned digger that made the company famous.
• Financial Times: John Phizackerley, Nomura’s chief executive of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has left the group, according to a terse internal memo circulated late last week.
• Financial Times: Alibaba has chosen Jack Ma’s trusted lieutenant Jonathan Lu to replace the founder when he steps down as chief executive of the Chinese e-commerce group in May.
• Financial Times: Sales of subprime auto asset-backed securities in the US have increased year-to-date to nearly $4 billion, almost double the volume during the same period of 2012, according to Deutsche Bank data.

Share tips, comment and bids

• The Daily Telegraph: Blackstone is running the slide rule over a potential £500 million bid for McCarthy & Stone, the UK's largest retirement homes builder.
• The Daily Telegraph: A £1 billion bidding war for Lucozade and Ribena is bubbling up with a raft of private equity firms from Blackstone to Permira considering potential offers for the brands.
• The Independent: Countryside Properties, one of the UK's biggest housebuilders, is aiming to return to the Stock Exchange in 2016, only weeks after being bought by a US hedge fund.
• The Guardian (Comment): You have to be one of Vince Cable's 'austerity jihadists' to believe you can cut your way out of a slump.
• The Guardian (Comment): Quantitative easing, German bailouts … parallels between the Byzantine empire of the 1070s and Europe today are instructive
• The Daily Telegraph (Comment): Like the IMF, it's time we showed more realism about debt reduction
• The Daily Telegraph (Comment): Germany's anti-euro party is a nasty shock for Angela Merkel.
• Daily Mail (Comment – Alex Brummer): Fukushima casts a long shadow over Britain's new nukes
• Financial Times (Lex): US carmakers: GM, Ford and the rest have led the US economic recovery but the sales rebound is not doing much for their share prices
• Financial Times (Lex): Italy: continued political gridlock in Rome remains the biggest cloud over southern European stock markets, with another lost year threatened.
• Financial Times (Lex): Banks’ leverage ratios: UK legislators have picked a fight with the government over leverage ratios, but there are several problems with their approach.
• Financial Times (Lex): Sukuk bonds: market for Islamic finance may benefit from the low yield climate, demand for infrastructure finance, and bank refinancing requirements.