Wednesday newspaper round-up: ITV, Amvescap, Erinaceous

Date: Wednesday 29 Mar 2006

The consortium bidding for ITV would seek a merger with Five, the Telegraph reports.

It believes that a merger between ITV and Five would make strategic sense as analogue broadcasters fight for audience and advertising share in a digital environment where there are hundreds of channels available.

Brandon Hire's chairman has made about £17m after selling the tool firm to Wolseley, the Telegraph writes.

Amvescap executives have been awarded pay rises which put them among the top earners in the FTSE 100, the Independent reports.

Insurers will warn the FSA today that consumers are paying an additional £400m a year for general insurance because of over-stringent financial regulation, The Times has learnt.

Insurers pass the cost of regulation on to consumers, who fail to shop around because they hate the lengthy financial warning that insurers are obliged to give before selling a product, according to an Association of British Insurers study.

Spending on online advertising is on track to overtake national press advertising this year, according to a new study.

Total UK online advertising expenditure in 2005 grew by 65.6% to £1.4bn to take the sector’s market share to 7.8%, research by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Internet Advertising Bureau, the trade body for online advertising, showed, reports the Times.

The Serious Fraud Office has swooped on a division of Erinaceous Group as part of an investigation into a suspected £10m property fraud against the Cheshire Building Society, the Times reports.

Ian McGarry, the London-based head of valuations at the company’s Dunlop Haywards subsidiary, was arrested by police last week after a raid on his home.

Halliburton, the American energy and construction group which used to be run by US vice-president Dick Cheney, is understood to have hired investment bank Goldman Sachs to run the $9bn flotation of its Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary, the Telegraph reports.

The sale comes amid renewed speculation about the future of Plymouth-based Devonport, which refits Britain's nuclear submarine fleet and is 51% owned by Kellogg Brown & Root.

In its first policy-making session under Ben Bernanke, the US Federal Reserve yesterday raised its key short-term rate for the 15th consecutive time and signalled that one or more further rises may be needed before the current 21-month tightening cycle comes to an end.

Albeit widely expected, the 25 basis points increase to 4.75%, coupled with the rates warning, sent stocks skidding on Wall Street, boosted longer-term bond yields and strengthened the dollar, the Independent writes.

An out-of-court settlement has been reached over the multi-million pound action brought by shareholders against Pricewaterhouse-Coopers as accountants for the flotation of E-District, the AIM-listed internet company now called YooMedia, the Independent reports.

Brixton will be among the first wave of property companies to convert into real estate investment trusts next year, Tim Wheeler, chief executive, signalled yesterday, says the FT.

Some of Europe's largest telecommunication operators want the power to levy new charges on internet companies such as Google to distribute their content over the internet, the FT reports.

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