LONDON (ShareCast) - Competition regulators are preparing to announce price-fixing charges against a quartet of current and former British Airways executives on August 7, setting the scene for a watershed criminal prosecution, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

The Office of Fair Trading's action will mark an escalation in the approach taken by British regulators towards businessmen who are alleged to have breached competition laws. BA, which is expected this week to trim its short-haul network to cut costs, has already been fined more than £120m by the OFT - the regulator's largest-ever penalty - and about £150m by the US justice department.

HBOS, the mortgage lender at the centre of bid speculation following its spectacular rights issue flop, is expected to add to the gloom surrounding its brand this week by disclosing that its first-half profits are 60 per cent lower than last year, reports the Independent on Sunday.

BP is poised to launch legal action against the four Russian billionaires who own half of TNK-BP, as the battle for control of the joint venture continues to escalate. News of the likely legal move comes after the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office warned that the departure of TNK-BP's chief executive, Robert Dudley, was detrimental to both the Russian and British economies and to the global energy industry, writes the Independent on Sunday.

In what is becoming an increasingly farcical situation, the Moscow prosecutor's office yesterday denied reports that the head of strife-torn Anglo-Russian oil group TNK-BP had been summoned for questioning, the Sunday Telegraph adds.

Shareholders in British Energy, Britain’s nuclear power group, are to be offered a share of the company’s future profits in a plan that should clear the way for it to be taken over by the French. The scheme, sketched out by advisers in recent weeks, is aimed at breaking a stalemate over price. Electricité de France (EDF), the utility, made an indicative offer of about 680p a share for BE several weeks ago. The price values the group at about £9.5 billion, says the Sunday Times.

The management of AT Communications, an Alternative Investment Market technology firm, is expected to table a buyout offer for the firm this week. Led by chief executive Alex Tupman, who founded AT in 1999, management is thought ready to table an offer to shareholders of around 40p to take the company private, according to the Independent on Sunday.

Bob Wigley, the head of Merrill Lynch's European operations and one of the City of London's most seasoned bankers, is among a group of candidates vying to become the next chairman of Prudential, Britain's second-biggest insurance group by market value, reports the Sunday Telegraph.

Two of the country’s leading estate agents are close to sealing a merger that would create a company with annual revenues of about £35m. Carter Jonas, a London agency, has been in talks with its rural counterpart Dreweatt Neate for several weeks, and the two are set to formally announce a tie-up, writes the Sunday Times.

The chief executives of Britain's blue-chip companies have seen the value of shares awarded to them during the past year fall in value by a total of nearly £20m, according to research carried out for the Sunday Telegraph.

The economy is heading into recession and may face a slump on the scale of the early 1990s, according to Deloitte, one of Britain’s leading accountants. Another, KPMG, says more than half of businesses are planning job cuts, writes the Sunday Times.

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