WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING
TOYOTA WANTS MORE NIMBLE FIRM
Akio Toyoda, the new chief executive of Toyota Motor, yesterday pledged to bring a looser, more nimble management style to the carmaker, which is facing its biggest crisis since Sakichi Toyoda – his grandfather and Toyota’s founder – ran the company six decades ago. Mr Toyoda promised “to do everything possible” to return the group to profit in 2010-2011, although “difficult conditions” would persist for the next two years. Toyota made a net loss of 437bn yen ($4.6bn) last year and has forecast a bigger deficit this year.
WILLIAM HILL MAY MOVE OFFSHORE
The odds on William Hill moving its online and telephone betting business offshore have shortened. Ralph Topping, chief executive, said yesterday that competition from rivals enjoying benevolent tax regimes meant the UK bookmaker did not have “the luxury of being parochial about our future”. Topping was responding to fears in the racing industry, voiced on Thursday in public for the first time, that William Hill will lead an exodus of UK bookmakers offshore.
SHINSEI CONFIRMS MERGER TALKS WITH AOZORA BANK
Japan’s Shinsei and Aozora Bank are discussing a merger that would create the country’s sixth-biggeset banking group, with assets of about 18,000bn yen ($187bn). The talks to link the banks, which were nationalised during Japan’s late-1990s banking crisis and which both have powerful private equity shareholders, underscore the difficulty that both companies have had in Japan’s crowded banking industry. Shinsei, 32.5 per cent owned by JC Flowers, the private equity firm controlled by Christopher Flowers, confirmed it was in talks with Aozora.
THE TIMES
RBS RISES ON BROKER UPGRADE
Royal Bank of Scotland got a boost yesterday after Cazenove upgraded the majority taxpayer owned bank to “outperform”. The broker said that the bank’s new management team was on the right path to a smaller group, reducing the size and risk of its balance sheet. It added that it expects the share price to react positively to news on restructuring, the asset protection scheme and disposals of non-core businesses.
JAPAN ON VERGE OF SUB-PRIME MORTGAGE CRISIS
Anaemic exports, a struggling domestic economy and a dramatic plunge in summer bonuses could cause Japan’s version of the sub-prime mortgage crisis to explode, a leading think-tank has warned. A housing loan default problem is looming and likely to begin in the next few weeks.
The Daily Telegraph
GOVERNMENT TACTICS SPARK FURY OVER BACKDATED PORT RATES
Britain’s port operators expressed outrage last night after the Government used a 17th-century parliamentary procedure to attempt to stifle opposition to its plans to backdate business rates. Lord Bates, a shadow local government minister, was due to table an amendment in the House of Lords on Monday seeking to end a furious row over retrospective rates.
NEWSPAPER DISTRIBUTOR DAWSON HOLDINGS IN DEBT TALKS
Dawson Holdings, the struggling newspaper distributor, has entered into a “standstill agreement” with its creditors as talks to dispose of its troubled distribution business continue. Dawson said that there had “been dialogue with interested parties” about selling the division which has lost £500m worth of contracts this year.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
BOSTON SCIENTIFIC APPOINTS CEO
Boston Scientific said President and Chief Executive Jim Tobin will retire next month after a decade on the job and be succeeded by Ray Elliott, the former president and CEO of orthopedic-devices maker Zimmer Holdings. Elliott, said yesterday that he wants to diversify Boston Scientific’s offerings and that he sees a “target-rich environment” for deals outside the medical-device maker if needed.
MICROSOFT PLANS LURE FOR WINDOWS 7
Microsoft announced a plan to encourage personal-computer users to move to a much anticipated new version of its operating system, Windows 7. As part of the plan, the company said the main consumer version of the software would cost $10 less than past versions of Windows.