WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING
FINANCIAL TIMES
BLACKSTONE STRIKES €700M DEAL TO BUY GERMANY’S JACK WOLFSKIN
Blackstone has agreed to take over outdoor clothing company Jack Wolfskin in a €700m ($995m) deal that underlined the rapid transformation of the sector from local businesses to international brands. The US buy-out group will announce on Thursday that it will acquire the German company from Barclays Private Equity and Quadriga Capital, people close to the situation said.
MINORITY INVESTORS SET TO SUE TNK-BP
Minority shareholders of TNK-BP, the Anglo-Russian oil major, are preparing legal action to claim billions of dollars of damages over BP’s failed bid to form a strategic partnership with Rosneft, the Russian state oil company. BP’s plan to partner Rosneft in an equity swap and Arctic exploration venture collapsed after AAR, the Russian shareholders in TNK-BP, at a tribunal in Stockholm.
20TH CENTURY FOX TO LAUNCH MOVIES ON ANDROID
20th Century Fox is bringing movie downloads to Google’s Android smartphone and tablet platform for the first time this year, setting up the fast-growing operating systems as a media platform to rival Apple’s digital dominance.
HUDDLE TO MODERNISE WHITEHALL COMPUTING
Huddle, a UK technology start-up, has formed a partnership with Whitehall’s senior security chiefs to make British civil servants among the first in the world to use cloud computing for work on classified government documents. The deal with the FCO services, which built the UK government’s secure private networks, will enable civil servants across Whitehall to share policy documents.
THE TIMES
GIANTS JOIN THE SUGAR RUSH IN BRAZIL
Dow Chemical and Mitsui have become the latest investors in Brazil’s burgeoning sugar cane industry.The two companies have formed a joint venture, reported to cost up to $2bn (£1.2bn), to manufacture plastic out of ethanol made from sugar cane.
CREDIT RATING AGENCIES ‘TOOK UNFAIR BLAME’ OVER DEBT CRISIS
Credit rating agencies are not to blame for exacerbating the eurozone debt crisis and the criticism against them has “largely been unjustified”, according to a House of Lords committee.The European Union’s suggestion to suspend ratings for bailed-out countries is “wholly impractical and smacks of censorship”, the committee says in a report to be published today after a four-month inquiry into the agencies’ influence on the crisis.
The Daily Telegraph
PFIZER TO BUY PAIN DRUG MAKER ICAGEN FOR $56M
Pfizer has agreed to buy Icagen, which is developing drugs to treat pain and related disorders. Pfizer already owns about 11 per cent of Icagen. It will acquire the remaining 8.3m shares for $6 each, for a total transaction value of $56m (£35m). In 2007, Pfizer and Icagen entered an agreement to develop and commercialize pain and other drugs.
MCDONALD’S OLYMPIC RESTAURANT WILL BE BIGGEST IN THE WORLD
The busiest and biggest McDonald’s is the world will be within the Olympic park in London, when it opens for business next summer, seating 1,500 customers. The fast food company is a long-standing sponsor of the Olympics, and as a result has a monopoly on all the catering outlets within the Olympic park in Stratford, east London.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
ANGLO IRISH’S US PORTFOLIO DRAWS INTEREST
Several banks, including Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co., are weighing bids for parts of nationalized Irish lender Anglo Irish Bank Corp.’s U.S. real-estate portfolio, according to people familiar with the matter. The bank’s real-estate loanshave a face value of about $9.5bn.
ALCATEL WEIGHS FUTURE OF ENTERPRISE UNIT
Elecommunications-equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent SA said Wednesday it was exploring options for its enterprise business unit, including a possible sale to a third party.The announcement follows months of speculation over the fate of the business unit, which could be worth at least $1.5bn.