LONDON (ShareCast) - Thousands of British holidaymakers face being stranded overseas today as their tour operator, XL Leisure, prepares to declare bankruptcy.

XL, the third-largest package holiday company in Britain, was trying frantically to secure a multimillion-pound rescue package last night but sources close to the negotiations said that its chances of survival were slim, reports the Times.

The desk telephone is to be banished for thousands of Tesco staff in a £100 million tie-up with Cable & Wireless under which employees will use mobile phones for all calls. Under the five-year deal, which will begin next month, staff in Tesco's 1,500 stores and distribution centres will be given Cable & Wireless Sim cards for mobile phones, allowing both fixed line and mobile calls to be carried through one handset, writes the Times.

Lehman Brothers was on Thursday night in talks with potential buyers – including Bank of America – in a last-ditch attempt to stave off collapse after investors gave a thumbs-down to its survival plans. Shares in Lehman, which had halved in value this week, plunged a further 41.8% on Thursday as uncertainty rose about the bank’s ability to continue as an independent entity. Lehman executives, led by chief executive Dick Fuld, began contacting rival banks in the morning after the shares tumbled in pre-market trading, says the FT.

Industry bodies have reacted angrily to the comments of an executive at energy group E.On who jokingly told a seminar on Wednesday that high winter gas prices would "make more money for us". E.On has apologised and launched an investigation into its head of emissions trading Mark Owen-Lloyd, whose quip provoked a backlash from consumers, politicians and industry, reports the Telegraph.

Gordon Brown’s promise to raise £910m from energy companies to fund a national home-insulation drive will cost the industry substantially less than the headline figure because the cost can be knocked off their tax bill. The taxpayer will effectively fund a sizeable chunk of the UK prime minister’s initiative, because companies can offset the cost of lagging homes against corporation tax at 28%, says the FT.

Amid increasing evidence that they believe credit is drying up, Kesa Electricals – one of the Continent’s biggest retailers – made the decision this week to forgo two more years of cheap bond funding, secured back in 2005. Instead, it opted to pay a higher rate now in order to see the company through another five years – thereby dodging the need to refinance during the deepening economic downturn, reports the FT.

Diageo, the world's biggest drinks company, is to build a new state-of-the-art brewery in Ireland on land with ties to the Guinness founding family as it look to cuts costs without harming its heritage. The new Arthur Guinness Brewery will be built in Leixlip, west of Dublin, on land purchased from the Guinness family and the local council, writes the Telegraph.

The Conservatives claimed that Labour's relations with the Square Mile had hit a new low after Sir James Sassoon, the Government's top City representative, resigned. Sir James's decision to relinquish his position as the Treasury's Special Representative for Promotion of the City, which he had held for more than two years, was announced last night. He will not be replaced, reports the Telegraph.

Open warfare broke out within the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee yesterday as its members offered wildly varying views on how to handle the economic downturn. The Governor of the Bank, Mervyn King, who chairs the MPC, and David Blanchflower, an outspoken external MPC member, gave markedly different verdicts on the prospects for the economy as they gave evidence to MPs on the Treasury Select Committee, writes the Independent.

BG Group's most recent oil discovery at Iara in Brazil's Santos Basin is more than three times larger than expected, the company has revealed, and could contain between 3 and 4 billion barrels of recoverable oil says the Independent.

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