LONDON (ShareCast) - Britain's banks have sent a strong signal to the Government that they will not tolerate Northern Rock being allowed to use its support from the taxpayer to compete too aggressively on the high street, says the Telegraph.

Shares of RAB Capital, Northern Rock's second-biggest shareholder, fell to a two-year low yesterday after the Government announced that the stricken bank would be nationalised, reports the Independent.

Joe Lewis, the Bahamas-based British billionaire, is the mystery buyer behind a near-7 per cent stake in Ladbrokes, the UK's biggest bookmaker, the Times has learnt.

British American Tobacco, the owner of Dunhill and Lucky Strike cigarettes, is among four groups that have submitted final bids for Tekel Cigarette, the state-owned Turkish group, writes the FT.

Analysts were expecting BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto to secure record increases for iron ore prices this year after Vale, the world's leading supplier, secured hikes of 65 per cent and 71 per cent from leading Asian steel makers, according to the Independent.

The British former head of collapsed brokerage Refco faces life in prison with a potential maximum sentence of 315 years after admitting he was wrong to remain quiet about losses at the company, says the Telegraph.

The BBC’s commercial arm is to offer UK audiences full-length programmes as paid downloads for the first time, after striking a partnership with Apple’s iTunes media store, reports the FT.

Major supermarket chains across Europe are potentially abusing their market position to drive down the prices paid to suppliers, the European Parliament declared yesterday, according to the Independent.

As the administrator for Global Trader Europe began the search for a buyer for the stricken spread trading group, the inquest began into how a single client could have pulled the business under, says the FT.

Centrica, the owner of British Gas, is expected to smash its earnings record this week and post profits of about £2 billion for 2007, an increase of more than 40 per cent on the previous year, according to consensus estimates by analysts, writes the Times.

The possibility of a more aggressive programme of interest rate cuts was raised yesterday by one of the Bank of England's more "hawkish" advisers, according to the Independent.

Pension liabilities for UK employers are set to rise under new mortality guidelines proposed by the Pension Regulator. For some pension schemes, changes to life expectancy assumptions could add an extra two years to members' life expectancy, resulting in a 5pc increase in pension liabilities, reports the Telegraph.

Robert Tchenguiz, the billionaire property entrepreneur, is considering putting part of his Laurel Pub Company into administration in a fresh setback to his ambitions in the pub sector, says the Times.

• News Channel