Assetco Share News (ASTO)

Japan's giant car industry has announced a major shutdown as fears grow over the economic impact of Friday's devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami which has crippled much of the north-east of the country.The three largest motor manufacturers - Toyota, Honda and Nissan - said they would stop production at almost all of their domestic assembly plants. The safety of the workforce and deaths were cited as reasons behind the decision. The electronics giant Sony also said it would be shutting down production, the Sunday Telegraph reports.FirstGroup is considering handing back the £1.1bn First Great Western rail contract three years ahead of schedule as the economic downturn and delays in the introduction of the new generation of intercity trains threaten the viability of the franchise. A unique break clause in the transport giant's contract allows it to terminate the franchise in 2013, and save £826.6m in payments to the government over the following three years, the Observer reports.The Serious Fraud Office is set to launch a series of new raids connected to the collapse of the Icelandic banking system as part of the growing investigation which saw Robert and Vincent Tchenguiz arrested in their London homes last week. Although the exact timing is unclear, the SFO is believed to be planning a series of additional raids in the hope of uncovering vital evidence on the 2008 failure of Kaupthing. The agency, the UK's fraud squad, is focusing on a narrow time frame in the run-up to the collapse of Kaupthing, the Icelandic bank in which Robert owned a stake and from which he received loans of as much as £1.7bn, the Sunday Telegraph reports.The Sunday Times adds that Kaupthing used cash from British savers to inflate its own share price artificially, one of its top customers has claimed. Kevin Stanford, boss of the All Saints fashion chain and co-founder of Karen Millen, said Kaupthing operated a scheme to prop up its shares for at least a year before it collapsed in October 2008. He said British deposits gathered through Kaupthing Edge, an online savings account that had 160,000 customers, were funnelled to some of the bank's richest customers ? on the condition they used the cash to buy shares in the bank.Ministers must not give an inch to militant unions opposed to public sector pension reform, the Government's pensions tsar warned yesterday. Lord Hutton's plans, which would force millions of people to work longer for a lower pension, have sparked a furious backlash from unions this week, with some warning of a 'summer of rage', the Mail on Sunday reports.Vodafone is forging closer ties with Verizon, its American partner, that could yield billions of pounds in savings on top of a long-awaited resumption in dividends from their joint telecoms venture. Vodafone is expected to provide details of the plans in May as it moves closer to striking a deal to extract a dividend from Verizon Wireless for the first time since 2005, the Sunday Times reports.Engineer Sheffield Forgemasters has launched a review over whether to resurrect plans to build a 15,000-ton steel press, a project axed in the early days of the coalition government. The firm had been promised an £80m loan by Labour, which believed that the project was vital to help Britain take a leading share of the burgeoning market for nuclear forgings, the Sunday Independent reports.Royal Bank of Scotland is poised to stoke the row over City excess by announcing that it has paid more than 300 top executives an average of more than £1m each. State-controlled RBS is being forced to disclose senior staff's pay for the first time under rules imposed by the City regulator. The details will emerge in the bank's annual report this week, when it must say how many "code" staff ? individuals deemed to take significant daily risk for the bank ? there are and their aggregate pay. Analysts believe that the total pay bill for the group of key executives will stretch to about £350m, the Sunday Times reports.Assetco, the troubled group that owns London's fire engines, has rebuffed a fresh takeover approach despite recently asking investors for emergency funding. The AIM-listed firm, which has a 20-year contract to supply vehicles and equipment to the London fire brigade, is understood to have received a formal bid from an Arab investor after it turned to shareholders last month to help solve its short-term funding problems. The offer, in the form of a letter to the Assetco board, indicated the mystery suitor was willing to pay more than 20p a share, a 25% premium to the company's closing price of 16p on Friday, the Sunday Times reports.Concerns have been raised that BP will fail to complete its controversial tie-up with Russian oil producer Rosneft, after a crucial board meeting in Paris ended in stalemate. Representatives of four Russian oligarchs rejected a compromise offer from BP that would have handed their joint venture, TNK-BP, a larger role in the Rosneft deal, which was announced earlier this year. The billionaires known collectively as Alfa-Access-Renova (AAR) - Mikhail Fridman, Len Blatvatnik, German Khan and Viktor Vekselberg own a 50% stake in TNK-BP, which produces a third of BP's oil output, the Sunday Telegraph reports.European leaders reached agreement on how to tackle the debt crisis afflicting the nations using the single currency, with significant concessions from Germany. Chancellor Merkel agreed to boost the region's bailout fund so it can lend the full €440bn (£380bn) that it initially promised. The fund will also be allowed to buy the bonds of governments in financial difficulties on the open market, but only if the respective country is locked into a national bailout program based on strict conditions, the Sunday Telegraph reports.