WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING
FINANCIAL TIMES
F&C OPPOSES US POLITICAL DONATIONS BY NEWS CORPORATION
F&C, the UK asset manager, will vote against the re-election of News Corp’s audit committee chairman at its upcoming annual meeting on Friday over the media group’s million-dollar political donations to the Republican Governors Association and the US Chamber of Commerce.“We are concerned to see the company deploy shareholder funds for activities that are best left to the individuals whose views they reflect and are not obviously a business matter for the company,” said Karina Litvack, head of governance and sustainable investment at F&C.
TOP OIL TRADER SAYS PRICE WILL FALL SHORT OF $100
Oil prices will rise modestly towards $85 a barrel next year despite market expectations they will return to over $100 a barrel, the world’s largest oil trading house has forecast. Ian Taylor, chief executive of Swiss-based Vitol, said a price band between $70 and $85 a barrel was “widely viewed as meeting producers’ needs while being ‘acceptable’ to consumers”.
NORWEGIANS CONVICTED FOR OUTWITTING ALGO
Two Norwegian day traders have been handed suspended prison sentences for market manipulation after outwitting the automated trading system of a big US broker.
The two men worked out how the computerised system would react to certain trading patterns – allowing them to influence the price of low-volume stocks.The case, involving Timber Hill, a unit of US-based Interactive Brokers, comes amid growing scrutiny of automated trading systems after the so-called “flash crash” in May.
THE TIMES
BRITAIN GOES RETRO IN CHRISTMAS RUN-UP
The gradual encroachment of Christmas into autumn has been a perennial bugbear of Scrooges for years. But this month a cold spell really has triggered an unusually early start to Christmas spending, according to John Lewis. Britain’s biggest department store group said sales of seasonal products have risen 16 per cent on last October, with sales of Christmas trees more than doubling.
PETROPAV CUTS BACK ON HK LISTING
Petropavlovsk has been forced to cut the amount it will raise from the listing of its iron ore subsidiary in Hong Kong for a second time. The goldminer said today that it will offer 1.04 billion shares in an initial public offering of its loss-making IRC division. This is 30 million fewer shares than announced last week.
The Daily Telegraph
LOVEFILM TO STREAM MOVIES ON SONY’S PLAYSTATION
Film-rental service LoveFilm has teamed up with Sony to offer movie streaming directly through the PlayStation 3 console. Subscribers to LoveFilm, of which there are currently 1.4m, will be able to choose from its collection of movies and watch them on their televisions.
DP WORLD RESUSCITATES LONDON FLOAT PLANS
DP World, the container terminals group controlled by the debt-laden Dubai World, plans to make another attempt next spring at a dual listing on the London Stock Exchange. The world’s fourth-biggest container ports group, which acquired UK operator P&O for £3.92bn in 2006, postponed its plans in June, blaming technical difficulties and subdued capital markets
WALL STREET JOURNAL
UK SEEKS PRIVATE INDUSTRY HELP IN AVERTING CYBER ATTACKS
The head of Britain’s communications intelligence agency said it may need to receive direct feeds of information from private companies in key economic sectors to better protect the UK economy from the threat from cyber attacks. In a rare speech, Iain Lobban, GCHQ’s director since 2008, said the risks from cyber attacks were expanding along with the rise in the Internet, which was growing 60 per cent a year.
UBS PLANS TRANSPARENCY REPORT
UBS will give shareholders more insight into how it nearly collapsed under the weight of billions in toxic securities in 2008, but the Zurich-based bank’s efforts to quell fury with former managers may fall short of some investors’ expectations.