Thursday newspaper round-up: Stagecoach, GSK, Water groups

Thu 23 Jul 2009

LONDON (SHARECAST) - Stagecoach, the bus and train operator, was linked with a takeover bid for its crisis-hit rival National Express last night as FirstGroup, a third competitor, walked away from a possible deal, says the Times.

GSK, Britain's largest pharmaceuticals company, could make up to £1bn from sales of its swine flu vaccine by the end of the year, industry analysts said yesterday as the first trials of the drug began in Australia, writes the Independent.

Water company shareholders were bracing themselves for fresh pressure on dividends as the industry regulator prepared to issue a decisive ruling today on the water bills paid by 26 million households, reports the Times.

The Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, yesterday pledged to help secure a "long-term" future for Vauxhall in an attempt to save much of its 5,500 UK workforce, as the parent company hopes to agree its sale by next week, according to the Independent.

The Times adds that Berlin has thrown its weight behind a Canadian bid to buy GM Europe, the carmaker that owns the Vauxhall marque in Britain and Opel in Germany. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, said yesterday that after reviewing the offers for the vehicle manufacturer from Magna, the Canadian car parts supplier, RHJ International, a Belgian industrials group, and BAIC, a Chinese bidder, she remained convinced that Magna was the best option.

Porsche plans to increase its capital base by at least €5bn ($7.1bn) in a move to bolster its sagging balance sheet ahead of a planned, though controversial, integration of carmaking operations with its German rival Volkswagen, the sports car group said early on Thursday morning, according to the FT.

Vodafone has expanded its emerging market operations by tying up with one of the major mobile groups in the oil and gas rich nation of Azerbaijan. The Newbury-based company, which has been linked with a takeover of T-Mobile UK after struggling in its home market, yesterday announced a strategic partnership with Azerfon, says the Independent.

Britain’s biggest companies are paying an average 70 per cent of executives’ pay to fund the final salary pensions of their top officials, making them hugely more expensive than the pensions of ordinary employees, says a new study. The report, from actuarial consultants Lane Clark & Peacock, is the first to look at the actual cost of executive pensions at FTSE 100 companies, writes the FT.

UK's application of anti-terrorism laws over failed banks has created lasting resentment in Iceland. Iceland's new finance minister Steingrímur Sigfússon is not looking for a fight with Britain. But like every citizen of this rocky outpost, he thinks the British government's draconian sanctions against his country at the height of the financial crisis last year were grotesque and have made it much harder to clinch a deal to refund IceSave depositors in the UK, reports the Telegraph.

Ebay performed slightly better than expected in the second quarter, reporting $2.1bn in revenue as its core marketplace business stabilised and business at PayPal and Skype picked up, according to the FT.

Setanta Sports is moving a step closer to extinction after a specialist group was called in to oversee a fire-sale of the collapsed Irish broadcaster's channels, although it expects to raise only £1m – just third of their true value, says the Independent.

The Government of Guinea has accused Rio Tinto of defying its authority and potentially destabilising civil peace. In an unusually blunt rebuke, the West African nation has told the mining group in a letter to stop trying to regain concessions for a multibillion-dollar iron ore deposit, writes the Times.

American taxpayers have made a $1.418bn profit on the $10bn federal loan handed to Goldman Sachs when the financial system was at risk last October, reports the Independent.

Morgan Stanley has set aside an unprecedented 72 per cent of its revenues from the past three months to pay bonuses for staff, warning that a costly "war for talent" on Wall Street was unsustainable, according to the Independent.