Friday newspaper round-up: British Energy, Balfour Beatty, Minerva

09/05/2008 

French power giant EDF is today expected to table a takeover offer for British Energy in a move that the UK Government hopes will kick-start development of a new generation of nuclear power stations.

EDF and its advisers, led by Merrill Lynch, were said last night to be finalising details of an all-cash bid pitched between £9.2bn and £10.2bn, though there were doubts that Iberdrola and Germany's RWE, were intending to place bids by today's deadline, reports the Telegraph.

High street banks have put up fees for millions of current account customers after their High Court defeat over penalty fees for overdraft charges. Monthly fees for packaged accounts at Lloyds TSB, Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest will rise by up to 20% this month. The banks said the rises were unconnected with Judge Andrew Smith's ruling on 24 April that unauthorised borrowing charges were subject to legislation on unfair contracts, writes the Independent.

The government has run into controversy after awarding a £5bn-plus contract to widen and maintain 63 miles of the M25 to a consortium featuring two companies involved in the Metronet fiasco. Balfour Beatty and Atkins, which each owned a fifth of collapsed London Underground maintenance group Metronet, together hold half of Connect Plus, the consortium yesterday named preferred bidder for the 30-year M25 contract by the Highways Agency, reports the Telegraph.

The government may be forced to reveal its planning in the build up to Northern Rock's nationalisation after the lender's largest shareholder, hedge fund SRM Global, joined private shareholders yesterday in suing the state for fair compensation, reports the Telegraph.

Gala Coral, the betting, bingo and casino group, has held exploratory talks with representatives of Britain's leading racecourses over a potential £300m-plus joint-bid for the Tote, the state-owned bookmaker. Neil Goulden, Gala Coral's chief executive, hosted a meeting last Friday with David Thorpe, chairman of the Racecourse Association, and Mark Elliott, the chief executive of Arena Leisure, the operator of seven tracks, says the Telegraph.

Retirement home company McCarthy & Stone is planning to make up to 10% of its workforce redundant because its elderly customers are unable to sell their existing homes and buy a new one in the wake of the credit crisis. McCarthy & Stone was bought by HBOS and Scottish businessman Sir Tom Hunter in 2006 for £1.1bn, writes the Telegraph.

Citigroup will on Friday identify as much as $400bn in non-core assets that could be sold as part of plans to reduce costs and restore profit growth to double-digit rates, according to people close to the situation. At a long-awaited meeting with Wall Street analysts, Vikram Pandit, Citi’s chief executive, also plans to confirm his pledge, first disclosed in the Financial Times, to cut Citi’s cost base of over $60bn by about 20%, says the FT.

Home repossession orders are at an all-time high, according to figures to be released by the Ministry of Justice today. The Times understands that the court figures for the first quarter of this year will show that such orders have soared with the credit crunch. The new court figures are predicted to be up by at least 25% on the same period last year, traditionally a heavy time for mortgage repossessions as lenders avoid Christmas.

Royal Mail will have to turn to the Government for more cash after revealing that it lost nearly £1m a day last year, its chairman and chief executive have conceded. Speaking yesterday after the group announced a pre-tax loss of £279 million for last year, Allan Leighton, the chairman, said that Royal Mail would need to know what funding would be possible for its next business plan, reports the Times.

Some of the country's biggest retailers plan to police their own industry through a national database that will blacklist staff sacked for stealing, forgery or fraud. The National Staff Dismissal Register is expected to hold details of thousands of employees for up to five years even if they are not prosecuted. It is expected to go live this month and organisers hope that it will also eventually cover the leisure industry, construction and road haulage groups, says the Times.

The state of Dubai could buy Minerva, one of London's largest property developers, which is pursuing ambitious schemes, including large City office developments and the rebuilding of Croydon's central shopping centre. The company's shares shot up yesterday after Limitless, part of the multibillion-pound Dubai World group of companies owned by the Gulf state, said that it was considering its options over the property group, reports the Times.

The Financial Services Authority has ordered insurance price comparison websites to overhaul their systems after identifying a string of failings that could mislead customers. The City watchdog found that many sites encouraged customers to pick products by price without giving enough information about differing terms. Information about excess claims was often inconsistent or wrong, reports the Independent.

BGY - British Energy Group

BGY

Latest Prices
Name	Price	%
British Energy Group	701.00	-1.96
Arena Leisure	42.00	-3.45
Atkins (WS)	1083.00	-0.46
Balfour Beatty	468.50	+0.32
Lloyds TSB Group	433.00	-2.42
Minerva	122.00	+4.50
Royal Bank of Scotland Group	347.00	-2.87