George Osborne and Vince Cable will today pile pressure on senior bankers by threatening tax rises and further regulations if they go ahead with another bumper round of bonuses. The Chancellor and the Business Secretary are meeting the chief executives of the five largest banks ? the Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard Chartered, Lloyds, HSBC and Barclays ? to persuade them to take urgent action to curb excessive payments, writes the Times.But investment bankers at the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland are in line to land £1billion in bonuses in defiance of increasingly frantic Government demands for restraint, according to the Daily Mail. Business Secretary Vince Cable yesterday issued the first explicit threat from the Coalition of a new supertax on 'scandalous' City handouts. It came amid mounting concern in Whitehall at plans by the leading banks to pay out a total of up to £7billion in the next few weeks, the paper reports.Fears are mounting that Britain's shoppers could find themselves staring at empty shelves if the treacherous weather continues in the run-up to Christmas. London's 120-store Brent Cross shopping centre was forced to close on Saturday due to "adverse weather conditions". The New West End Company, which represents 600 retailers on Oxford Street, Bond Street and Regent Street, estimated about 1m shoppers had visited their stores over the weekend - fewer than the 1.2m customers they had expected based on last year's figures, the Guardian writes.The European Commission is expected to clear News Corporation's planned £12bn buyout of BSkyB this week. The Commission, which is studying potential competition issues, not plurality, is due to hand down its ruling by Wednesday. The decision is expected to be favourable for the Rupert Murdoch-led News Corp, which already owns The Times, The Sunday Times, the News of the World and The Sun through its News International unit, the Independent reports.Serco, Global Infrastructure Partners and Lockheed Martin have emerged as potential buyers of the Government's stake in Britain's air traffic controllers. Negotiations over the future of the government holding in National Air Traffic Services have intensified recently with a formal decision expected within three months, possibly as part of the Budget in March, according to the Times. Rio Tinto is in advanced talks to sell its talc business to the French mineral conglomerate Imerys for up to €500 million (£420 million). A planned sale of Luzenac, which meets about a fifth of the world's demand for talc, was first announced last year as part of a massive asset disposal programme introduced to pay down the giant London-listed miner's debt, the Times says.The Bank of England's credibility has once again been thrown into question after the CBI suggested the central bank's inflation and interest rate expectations were too conservative. In the latest blow to the Bank, the CBI warned that higher than projected price rises will force policymakers to start raising interest rates in the spring to curb the threat to the economy, according to the Telegraph.Shareholders in HSBC are questioning the economic viability of the bank remaining headquartered in London, according to Michael Geoghegan, its outgoing chief executive. In his only UK media interview Mr Geoghegan, who stepped down on Friday last week, reveals that the bank's investors are now more focused on the issue and warns that the threat to London's attractiveness comes from politicians and regulators failing to appreciate its "uniqueness", the Telegraph says.British households are pessimistic about their finances, reluctant to spend money and nervous that high levels of inflation are likely to further erode their spending power, according to new research published today. The Markit Household Spending Survey shows that while there has been an increase in spending during the past few weeks, despite the wintry weather, many Britons remain reluctant to commit to big-ticket purchases and are wary about their economic future, the Independent reports.Defence companies will find out this week how plans to throw the government's weight behind Britain's defence exports will work in practice. A Ministry of Defence (MoD) Green Paper to be published soon is expected to outline plans to take into account the industrial and economic implications of spending decisions, and also to consider future overseas sales opportunities when designing defence programmes, according to the Independent.
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