Date: Sunday 25 Jul 2010
BP is paving the way for the departure of Tony Hayward, its embattled chief executive, as it prepares to unveil this week the largest quarterly loss in British corporate history.A crucial board meeting tomorrow will decide Hayward’s fate, according to insiders. The options are to announce his exit on Tuesday, alongside the second-quarter results, or when the ruptured oil well in theGulf of Mexico is finally sealed in a few weeks’ time. The results will reveal the financial impact of the oil spill, the worst in American history. Insiders said BP is preparing to make provisions between $25bn (£16bn) and $30bn for capping the well, the clean-up and the escrow account it promised the American government to cover damages claims, the Sunday Times reports.
The Sunday Telegraph also says that Tony Hayward is finalising the details of his imminent exit from BP this weekend as the oil giant prepares to make an announcement on the chief executive's future possibly within the next 48 hours. After a weekend of detailed negotiations over Hayward's severance package, it now appears almost certain that he will announce his departure ahead of BP's half year results on Tuesday. According to consensus estimates, those results are expected to show that BP has made profits of nearly $10bn so far this year, despite the Deepwatter Horizon disaster, the Telegraph reports.
BP will this week reveal that it has cleared itself of gross negligence after an internal inquiry into the causes of the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The company believes evidence will emerge of the role that other oil companies and contractors on the project had in causing the worst environmental disaster in US history, the Observer adds.
British Gas is expected to reject customers' demands that it cut its prices, despite the fact that this week it will announce that profits have almost doubled in the first six months of the year. Parent company Centrica is forecast to report the huge jump in profits after benefiting from the coldest winter for 30 years and the declining cost of wholesale energy. Analysts at Citigroup forecast that British Gas's profits from selling gas and electricity to households will hit £583m, an increase of 95% on last year, the Observer reports.
Equitable Life chief Chris Wiscarson, has weighed into the row over policyholders’ compensation saying that he “cannot support” the conclusions of the report into the scandal. Wiscarson, who was appointed as chief executive of the group in 2009, has written to the Treasury Minister, Mark Hoban, pointing out problems with the Chadwick Report, which suggested that victims should receive only a tenth of what they have lost. “We cannot support the conclusions of a report which has objectives that appear to us quite different from what was anticipated by the Parliamentary Ombudsman,” he said, the Sunday Telegraph reports.
Sir Richard Branson is preparing Virgin Active for a stock market float that could value the gym chain at about £1bn. The move would trigger a huge windfall for the entrepreneur, who holds a 75% stake in the business he founded in 1999. Branson has instructed a raft of City advisers to begin work on the listing, including the investment bank Goldman Sachs as well as Citi and Royal Bank of Scotland. They are aiming to float the 187-strong gym chain in the autumn, teh Sunday Times reports.
JC Flowers, run by the former Goldman Sachs banker Chris Flowers, is pumping €450m (£380m) into Banca Civica — one of five Spanish savings banks that failed Europe’s banking stress tests on Friday night, the Sunday Times reports. The capital injection is one of a series of fundraisings expected to be announced in response to the tests, which showed that seven of the top 91 banks in Europe need more cash.
A banker who was paid $11.7m (£7.6m) for two months’ work has been threatened with legal action by the corporate advisory firm he used to run. Richard Fenhalls, former chairman of Strand Partners, was paid the sum for advising the board of Sibir Energy, a London-listed oil group that last year was hit by a scandal over misuse of corporate funds. The sum works out at about £950,000 a week — six times the going rate for a top Premier League footballer. The cash was paid into a company set up by Fenhalls. The potential legal row centres on whether his former colleagues at Strand Partners were entitled to a share of the $11.7m, the Sunday Times reports.
The Apprentice's Lord Sugar has signalled a return to the boom years with the proposed sale of three of his prized Mayfair properties, at pre-credit crunch prices. The one-time Enterprise Tsar is seeking £120m for the portfolio, which would be comparable to 2006 numbers. The star asset is the period façade retail and office property at 6-8 Old Bond Street. The other two properties are Albemarle House on the corner of Albemarle Street and Grafton Street, the Sunday Independent reports.
Anadarko Petroleum, the Texan partner in BP's Deepwater Horizon oil well which exploded in April, is eyeing a 75% stake in the onshore Jolly Ranch scheme in Colorado. The Jolly Ranch scheme is a 50:50 joint venture between Running Foxes Petroleum in Colorado and the London-listed Nighthawk Energy, the Sunday Independent reports.
Emed Mining, the owner of the 5,000-year-old Rio Tinto copper mine in south-west Spain, is considering a move to the main board of the London Stock Exchange. The group is currently listed on the Alternative Investment Market, the junior exchange, and is in the middle of a dual flotation on the Toronto board, the Sunday Independent reports.
A US and Middle-Eastern consortium which plans to build one of London's tallest skyscrapers, the Pinnacle, is close to agreeing terms with HSBC to lead the £600m financing of the ambitious project. The consortium and its development manager, Arab Investments, are in detailed talks with HSBC, one of the world's biggest banking groups, to act as lead. HSBC would be responsible for helping secure financing from other banks for the other banks for the Pinnacle.
A US and Middle-Eastern consortium which plans to build one of London's tallest skyscrapers, the Pinnacle, is close to agreeing terms with HSBC to lead the £600m financing of the ambitious project. The consortium and its development manager, Arab Investments, are in detailed talks with HSBC, one of the world's biggest banking groups, to act as lead. HSBC would be responsible for helping secure financing from other banks for the other banks for the Pinnacle.
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