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Sunday newspaper round-up: Housebuilders, Lloyds TSB, Barclays

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Date: Sunday 15 Jun 2008

LONDON (ShareCast) - A group of Britain's biggest institutional investors are working on secret plans to provide direct funding to shore up the beleaguered housebuilding sector. Bankers at UBS have drawn up possible plans for a wide-ranging placing by major shareholders in companies including Taylor Wimpey and Barratt Development, says the Sunday Telegraph.

Lloyds TSB is considering launching a takeover bid for one of Germany's largest retail banks, underlining the British lender's relative immunity to the writedowns that have scarred the balance sheets of its international rivals. Lloyds TSB is in the early stages of considering a move for Deutsche Postbank, valued by the German stock market at about €10bn (£8bn), which has been earmarked for disposal, writes the Sunday Telegraph.

Banking giant Barclays is close to raising £4 billion in a placing with some of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds. The move is the latest in a series of capital raisings around the world by banks that have been hit hard by the credit crisis. Marcus Agius, the bank’s chairman, and his chief executive John Varley are expected to come under pressure tomorrow to clarify the fundraising in a stock-exchange statement, reports the Sunday Times.

British Energy could abandon its £11 billion auction and instead parcel the company’s nuclear development sites into a series of joint ventures, according to the Sunday Times.

Property agents in the rental sector must be better regulated, a major housing report launched tomorrow will conclude. The Carsberg Review of Residential Property is expected to argue that the 1979 Estate Agents Act needs to be updated so that estate and letting agents require an entry-level qualification, says the Independent on Sunday.

Standard Chartered bank is under fire for allegedly breaching EU sanctions on Zimbabwe. The Foreign Office admitted it is investigating one case of a possible breach of the sanctions, writes the Independent on Sunday.

Trouble on the high street and in the property market has begun to hit the entire media sector. In figures to be published before the end of June, Group M, the media buying group owned by marketing services giant WPP, has revised its quarterly forecasts downwards to show that £190m will be wiped off traditional media advertising budgets this year, reports the Sunday Telegraph.

Leading investors in Royal Bank of Scotland have told Merrill Lynch, the group's adviser, that chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin has one year to save his job. However, rumours in Edinburgh suggest Sir Fred is fed up of recent criticisms and could leave within three months, according to the Independent on Sunday.

Businesses across the country are heading into annual negotiations with their power suppliers, facing the prospect of a 100% rise in their annual bills. About half of UK small and mid-sized firms strike annual energy contracts that expire in October, and are beginning to enter talks about new deals, says the Sunday Times.

London Mayor Boris Johnson, the telecoms group BT and 40 MPs have demanded that Gordon Brown introduces legislation to make big companies report their carbon emissions, writes the Independent on Sunday.

Investors are bracing themselves for a bloody week on Wall Street, with three of America's biggest investment banks, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley, expected to unveil further writedowns totalling as much as $9bn (£4.6bn), reports the Independent on Sunday.

The fate of Enodis, the FTSE 250 manufacturer of kitchen equipment, is to be settled through a late-night auction similar to the one which led to last year's £6.2bn takeover of Corus, the former British Steel, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

Simon Brickles, the chief executive of Plus Markets, the UK's stock exchange for small companies, will soon be able to compete head-on with the London Stock Exchange if he gets the go-ahead to offer trading in all 1,700 stocks listed on the Alternative Investment Market, says the Independent on Sunday.

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