A-Z of the Sunday newspapers

13 April 2012

THIS Is Money reads the Sunday papers so you don't have to. Here is this week's run-down of who is making the headlines on the City pages:

The Business:

BSkyB's $1.6bn deal to screen English Premiership football faces a further setback from the European Commission. The Commission is not convinced by new proposals put to it in the past two weeks that the competition for live broadcasting rights was fair and open.

Alchemy, the private equity fund, is in exclusive talks to sell its InnSpired pubs business to County Estate Management for around £350m. The company operates 1,100 pubs.

Independent on Sunday:

GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer are among seven of the biggest drugs companies in the world in talks that could lead to HIV drugs being given free to some of the world's poorest nations. The talks are going on between the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions and the main producers of HIV drugs.

HSBC and Standard Chartered have been questioned by banking regulators and the United Nations about their relationships with a company run by notorious Russian arms dealer Victor Bout. Bout has been identified in UN reports as selling arms to Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia.

Sainsbury's chief executive Sir Peter Davis will face pressure from investors this week when the supermarkets group reports a further set of disappointing results. Sainsbury's will give a second-quarter update on Friday. Analysts expect sales growth ranging from flat to an improvement of just 1%.

Sunday Telegraph:

Barclays Bank chief executive Matt Barrett has said no to moving up to be chairman of the group. He was offered the opportunity earlier this year. His contract runs until the end of 2004.

Powergen, the UK energy group owned by Eon of Germany, is set to buy Midlands Electricity for £1.2bn. Debt-laden Midlands serves 2.3m people.

Marks & Spencer will this week reveal sales have stalled. On Tuesday the High Street stores group will announce flat like-for-like sales over the past 12 weeks.

Mobile phones: A cut-throat price war is set to break out in the run up to Christmas. The major networks are expected to slash handset prices to as little as £40.

Sunday Times:

New Look founder Tom Singh is reluctant to increase his offfer for the company to much more than 330p a share. This casts doubt on a formal offer materialising. Singh, Permira and Apax Partners have been working on a takeover for many months.

British Airways is to slash its European fleet at Gatwick by a quarter next summer. Following the cuts the airline will have 32 short-haul planes at Gatwick, down from 42 this summer. The move is part of its Future Size and Shape policy.

Split-capital investment trusts: Investors who suffered in the scandal face serious setbacks. The Financial Ombudsman Service has rejected most of the first claims for compensation. The FOS has processed about 400 claims and rejected about 75% of them.

The Observer:

British Airways could restart merger talks with American Airlines. The British group is wating to see if regulators approve last week's Air France deal with the Dutch KLM airline.

Newcastle United is being investigated by the Financial Services Authority. This follows a trading frenzy in the football club's shares last week which led it making a statement to the Stock Exchange denying suggestions that manager Sir Bobby Robson had quit.

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