LONDON (ShareCast) - Wolseley will this week outline plans to axe hundreds of jobs amid trading conditions that have become sufficiently dire to trigger a profits warning from the plumbing and building supplies group, says the Sunday Telegraph.

Dawnay Day, the £2bn investment firm, is expected early this week to appoint Ernst & Young as administrators to some of its businesses as it becomes the latest victim of the credit crisis, says the Sunday Telegraph.

ITV has talked to strategic investors who want to buy BSkyB's 17.9 per cent stake, as a prelude to a possible bid, writes the Observer.

Rio Tinto, the mining giant fighting off an unsolicited bid from BHP Billiton, is accelerating a disposal programme that could generate billions of pounds from the sale of its Alcan Packaging unit and its US thermal coal operations, reports the Sunday Telegraph.

Tesco is developing a new range of own-brand products to tackle the so-called Aldi effect which has seen thousands of hard-pressed families defect to the German discounter, says the Sunday Times.

Several of the world's largest buy-out firms are considering a counter bid for Informa, publisher of the shipping newspaper Lloyd's List, says the Sunday Telegraph.

Banking giant HBOS is bracing itself for a poor take-up of its £4bn rights issue amid growing gloom in the housing and banking markets, says the Observer.

Top institutional shareholders in HBOS have told Andy Hornby, the chief executive, that he must consider selling a series of key divisions - a move that could bolster the bank's balance sheet by several billion pounds on top of its £4bn rights issue, reports the Sunday Telegraph.

Allstate, the US insurance giant, has brought in investment bank JPMorgan, alongside advisers Lehman Brothers, to arrange the financing for its estimated £7bn tilt at Royal Bank of Scotland's insurance arm (RBSi), writes the Independent on Sunday.

Reed Elsevier, the FTSE100 media group that publishes the medical journal The Lancet, has begun searching for a successor to its long-serving chief executive, Sir Crispin Davis, writes the Sunday Telegraph.

Bankers for Regent Inns, owner of the Australian-themed sports-bar chain Walkabout, are looking to appoint a corporate-restructuring specialist to evaluate the future of the struggling pub business, writes the Sunday Times.

FTSE 100 property giant Land Securities is expected to keep hold of a £400m hotels business as it considers offers for Trillium, its outsourcing and infrastructure division, this week, reports the Independent on Sunday.

Utility group Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) is in the early stages of evaluating a takeover bid for Energia, Ireland’s largest independent power company, reports the Sunday Times.

A property joint venture worth £375 million involving the car dealer Pendragon has breached its banking covenants, leading to demands for a multi-million-pound cash injection, says the Sunday Telegraph.

BT will try to kick-start growth of its television service this week by offering its top-spending customers Setanta’s main sports channel for free, says the Sunday Times.

Skyepharma, the struggling biotech company, is in talks with its backers about conducting a debt for equity swap on £89m of bonds due to mature over the next two years, says the Telegraph.

Online gaming company Playtech is poised to announce a deal with Paramount Pictures to produce games based on two of the Hollywood studio’s most popular titles, Gladiator and The Untouchables, says the Sunday Times.

The Bank of England will tomorrow publish its annual report and accounts, which will disclose that the £19.3bn of loans made to Northern Rock is still on its books, says the Independent on Sunday.

Top City practitioners and regulators have been summoned to the Treasury tomorrow to discuss reforming the rights issue process, in the wake of the chaos surrounding the recent cash calls undertaken by the UK's troubled banks, says the Independent on Sunday.

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