BP's $16bn joint venture with Rosneft was blocked last night in a ruling that has thrown the company's growth strategy into turmoil.A judgment by independent arbitrators that the deal cannot progress is hugely embarrassing for Robert Dudley, BP's chief executive, since he personally negotiated it with Rosneft and the Kremlin. BP had proposed taking a 10% stake in Rosneft while the Russian state-owned company would have acquired 5% of BP. But the Swedish panel found that the proposed tie-up breached an agreement BP had with its existing Russian subsidiary, the Times reports.Barclays is emerging as a key focus of the US and UK regulatory probe into alleged rigging of benchmark interbank lending rates that are the reference point for $350,000bn in financial products, people familiar with the investigation said. Investigators are probing whether communications between the bank's traders and its treasury arm, which helps set the daily London interbank offered rate, or Libor, violated "Chinese wall" rules that prevent information-sharing between different parts of the bank, the FT reports.David Cameron was warned yesterday that he was within a "rounding error" of breaking his pledge to protect health spending as the impact of high inflation on public finances was laid bare. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said pressure is mounting and there is a one-in-three chance of taxes rising or some government departments being forced to make further cuts. The NHS, which is meant to be sheltered from spending reductions, may have to be given an additional cash injection after the Prime Minister was accused of "sailing close to the wind" over his election promise, the Times reports.Aviva, Britain's second-largest insurer, has put its RAC breakdown unit up for sale and is understood to be looking for at least £600m. The sale process is in the early stages but Andrew Moss, Aviva's chief executive, has hired JP Morgan to advise, according to people familiar with the process. Several parties, thought to include both private equity and trade buyers, are understood to have expressed an interest in RAC, which Aviva bought for £1.2bn in 2005, the Times reports.David Cameron was urged by furious Conservative MPs yesterday to refuse to give any British money towards a bailout of Portugal after forecasts that it could cost €4.5bn. Downing Street conceded that the Government was committed to the European Union's current rescue mechanism and argued that it was powerless to prevent the huge call on Treasury funds. But the Prime Minister is under intense pressure to persuade the EU to structure a rescue of Portugal differently from the Irish bailout, which left Britain on the hook for €2.7bn in addition to a bilateral loan to Dublin of €3.8bn, the Times reports.Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, convinced her European counterparts to restructure a new €500bn eurozone bail-out fund so that members will not have to pay cash into the system so quickly. The new fund, which goes into place in 2013, will require €80bn in paid-in cash as well as €620bn in guarantees and callable capital so that it can use its full €500bn to rescue debt-ridden countries that suffer a Greece-like implosion, the FT reports.The Huffington Post will launch a UK edition this summer, said its co-founder Arianna Huffington. Ms Huffington said one reason she agreed to sell the news website to AOL for $315m (£195m) last month was to provide the financing to expand into international markets, such as the UK and Canada, as well as developing video on the Huffington Post. The UK edition will initially be a localised homepage with more British content, before linking to further content on the regular site, the Telegraph reports.National Express's hopes of holding on to its lucrative East Anglian rail franchise have been dashed after it was left off the shortlist. Despite turning around its performance and winning a reprieve from the Department for Transport from being banned from bidding for new railway franchises, National Express has not made the shortlist for Greater Anglia, the train service it has run for the past six years. Chief executive Dean Finch was said by colleagues to be "surprised and disappointed and perplexed" by the decision not to shortlist the company, the Times reports.Hammerson has submitted plans for a new £350m residential tower and major office development that will drive expansion of the Square Mile beyond its traditional boundaries. The FTSE 100 company has revised its original plans for Bishops Place on Shoreditch High Street and now aims to develop a residential tower with 243 apartments which will target the growing demand for quality accommodation in the City, the Telegraph reports.Shares in Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM) slumped as investors punished the company for ceding more share in the lucrative market for smartphones it once dominated. RIM shares fell more than 10% in after-hours trading after the Canadian company's forecasts for profits for in current quarter failed to match Wall Street's expectations, adding more pressure to the launch next month of its new Blackberry PlayBook Tablet computer, the Telegraph reports.Yahoo is gauging advertisers' interest for a new kind of online ad - a hybrid of search and display advertising - which it hopes could help boost the fortunes of its perennially disappointing search business. The technology giant has launched an improved version of its search engine which it hopes will lure users back to its site. Yahoo, once a pioneer in ways to search the web, has been losing market share to Microsoft's Bing and is now at risk of falling into third place in terms of numbers of search queries, the Independent reports.
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