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Wednesday newspaper round-up: L&G, Liberty, Reed

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Date: Wednesday 05 Mar 2008

LONDON (ShareCast) - Legal & General, Northern Rock's largest institutional shareholder with a 4.8pc stake, has indicated it would consider taking the Government to court if it is not satisfied with the compensation paid to investors in the wake of the mortgage lender's nationalization, says the Telegraph.

Talks are taking place that may see Liberty International, the FTSE 100 property group that owns London's Covent Garden, team up with major rival, to become the world's largest shopping mall group, writes the Independent.

Permira, the British private equity group, has emerged as a potential suitor for Reed Business Information, the trade magazines arm of Reed Elsevier, which could soon be for sale for about £1.25 billion, says the Times.

Key shareholders were pressing GCap Media to talk to suitor Global Radio on Tuesday night after the privately held company increased its indicative offer to 225p a share, or £370m, according to the FT.

The Chancellor's "shambolic" changes to Capital Gains Tax have left those affected "under pressure", "angry" and "aggrieved", according to Britain's leading accountancy professionals. Firms large and small are reporting a rush in business as the Treasury has left a window of a few weeks before the 10 per cent levy on most of these capital gains is replaced at midnight on 5 April by the new 18 per cent rate, says the Independent.

Alistair Darling plans to exclude Northern Rock’s estimated £100bn liabilities from the headline figures in his first Budget, writes the Times.

One of the Chancellor's key business advisers has attacked the Government's clampdown on non-domiciled workers as a return to the days of old Labour and urged Alistair Darling to exclude the proposed rules from next week's Budget, the paper adds.

Alistair Darling will attempt to kickstart the wholesale markets by kitemarking the best mortgage loans, it emerged last night. The Treasury is drawing up plans to grade mortgages so that high street lenders can sell them on to investors in the money markets. The plans are expected to be revealed in the Budget, says the Telegraph.

The horse racing industry's bid for the state-owned Tote bookmaker is expected to be formally rejected by the Government today. Instead, ministers are expected to outline plans to put the Tote up for auction, according to the Independent.

Goldman Sachs is on track to take a 20pc equity stake in Eurotunnel in a move that would make it by far the biggest investor in the Channel Tunnel operator and give it significant say over the company's future direction, writes the Telegraph.

The Chancellor is expected next week to close a loophole in Sharia finance rules that have allowed commercial property investors to avoid paying stamp duty on more than £1 billion of deals, The Times has learnt.

Opec will ignore pleas from America and Europe to ease record oil prices and leave the level of barrels it is pumping unchanged at a meeting in Vienna today, said analysts, according to a report in the Independent.

European and US banks will move more IT work to cheaper countries to cut budgets, according to the head of Infosys, the Indian software giant. The move could herald further job cuts in the City, writes the Times.