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Thursday newspaper round-up: Stagecoach, Friends Provident, HBOS

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Date: Thursday 03 Apr 2008

LONDON (ShareCast) - Jérôme Kerviel, the rogue trader accused of losing SocGen €5 billion (£3.9 billion) in one of the financial world's biggest scandals, has hit upon a new money-making scheme — he is to sue his former employer for unfair dismissal, writes the Times.

Brian Souter, chief executive of Stagecoach, has saved himself up to £5m by transferring 22 million shares in his company to a family trust before new capital gains tax rules come into force at the weekend, writes the Independent.

Friends Provident, the embattled life assurer, has the backing of Scottish Widows, its biggest shareholder, in rebuffing a £3.5bn takeover approach from JC Flowers, the US private equity group, wites the FT.

HBOS, the UK’s biggest mortgage lender, has suggested the number of housing transactions could fall as much as 30 per cent this year, piling further pressure on the property market, says the FT.

The Office of Fair Trading is expected to impose multimillion-pound fines on 150 construction companies after a bid-rigging investigation into local council contracts worth £3 billion, according to the Times.

The Bank of England's financial markets chief Paul Tucker has issued a clarion call for banks and investors to buy up the troubled asset-backed securities at the heart of the financial crisis, says the Telegraph.

The $1.4bn (£704m) flagship hedge fund of London’s Plexus Partners has lost more than a third of its value this year after arbitrage trades in the credit markets went spectacularly wrong, according to the FT.

Polygon, one of London's biggest and best known hedge funds, has introduced special measures to cope with the large number of investors who have asked to withdraw their money, says to the Telegraph.

Growing disagreement about the accounting treatment of inflation and investment assumptions is casting doubt on the readiness of pension funds to meet their liabilities and prompting heightened scrutiny of the sector, according to the FT.

Pension schemes for the UK's biggest companies had a record surplus of £40.4bn at the end of March, figures have shown, writes the Telegraph.

The private equity owners of Gala Coral, Britain's largest privately-owned company, have agreed with its creditors to inject £125m into the troubled business. It is the biggest UK leverage buyout so far to suffer financial stress as a result of the current downturn, writes the Telegraph.

EMI has recruited a senior Google executive to lead its digital operations who suggests he can take the record company in a new direction, including a possible relaxation of its position on online piracy, says the FT.