WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING
FINANCIAL TIMES
COMMODITY HOUSES COURT INVESTORS
The world’s largest commodity trading houses have revealed how they are courting outside investors including private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds as they seek to expand beyond their traditional business of buying and selling raw materials.
PRICE RISES LIFT HERSHEY’S EARNINGS
Shares of Hershey jumped almost six per cent yesterday as the US candy company raised its earnings outlook and reported robust first-quarter results.
HOLLANDE SEEKS WIDER EU FISCAL PACT
François Hollande, the French Socialist presidential candidate, is not seeking to unpick the European fiscal pact but wants to complete it with tools to promote economic growth, one of his senior advisers signalled yesterday. “What concerns us is not what is in the treaty, it is what is not in the treaty,” Michel Sapin, Mr Hollande’s policy chief, told the Financial Times in an interview. However, he was emphatic that the agreement as it stood does too little to ensure Europe will escape an austerity trap.
THE TIMES
WEALTHY FRENCH MAKE PLANS TO FLEE
If François Hollande is elected President next month, prepare to hear a lot more French in London. The prospect has put the wind up the moneyed classes, prompting many to prepare to follow the thousands of wealthy French to the UK.
NEW CHALLENGE TO BIG SIX
SSE, one of Britain’s largest energy firms, is vowing to break the stranglehold enjoyed by the “Big Six” suppliers by offering power to independent rivals.
The Daily Telegraph
ANGELA MERKEL DEFENDS AUSTERITY
Angela Merkel has launched a staunch defence of Europe’s fiscal pact as politicians from the Netherlands, Spain and Greece scrambled to keep their own austerity measures on track.
BO XILAI’S WIFE IN ALLEGED CONFESSION
Bo Xilai’s’s wife Gu Kailai, accused of murdering the British businessman Neil Heywood, confessed that she was in the room when he was poisoned, according to an account given to American diplomats.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
MAD-COW CASE IN CALIFORNIA
The US Department of Agriculture said yesterday that it had confirmed the first new case of mad-cow disease since 2006 after the illness was suspected in a California dairy cow. The USDA tests about 40,000 cows per year.
MEDVEDEV PLEDGES REFORMS
President Dmitry Medvedev pledged to expand political and economic freedoms in his valedictory address as president yesterday.