Barclays Share News (BARC)

The Chancellor has ruled out British participation in a further bailout of Greece as the eurozone grapples with the country's debt crisis. George Osborne said yesterday that the UK had been a "reluctant partner" in Portugal's rescue and would not be writing further cheques for the Greeks. His comments came as European finance ministers discussed how to handle Greece's latest financial crisis, says the Times.Barclays is expected to announce as early as Monday that it will no longer take part in the legal action over the scandal which saw thousands of customers mis-sold PPI they did not need. Its decision will leave Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC isolated on the issue, reports the Telegraph.The Office for National Statistics is looking into whether a change in the way it collects data about the construction industry has distorted reported levels of activity, with gross domestic product growth likely to have been stronger in the first quarter of 2011 than had been reported, but weaker at the end of 2010.Construction executives said a change to the methods used for the agency's monthly survey led companies to submit data about business completed up to six weeks earlier, the Financial Times reports.The Bank of England will downgrade Britain's economic growth forecast this week, confirming that the recovery is stalling as the Government's austerity measures take their toll. The central bank is expected to follow the consensus by revising down its figures in its quarterly Inflation Report on Wednesday, reports the Telegraph.Ministers are poised to publish a draft Bill which would give a new supermarket ombudsman powers to prevent Britain's 10 biggest grocers from bullying their suppliers. However, the legislative timetable means that the watchdog, to be known as the Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA), will probably not begin work until the summer of 2013 - more than five years after a landmark Competition Commission inquiry recommended the measure, the Independent reports.The bingo halls and casino operator Rank has advised its shareholders to reject a takeover bid from its largest investor, saying that it undervalues the company. On Friday, Guoco - a property and investment holding firm controlled by the Malaysian billionaire Quek Leng Chan - acquired an 11.6% stake in Rank, thus increasing its shareholding in the FTSE 250-listed company to 40.8%, says the Independent.The price of a bottle of the very finest Bordeaux is about to soar higher than ever, driven up by a second successive exceptional vintage ? and by China's insatiable thirst for an investment. "The châteaux are saying to themselves: 'We'd like to ask just a little bit more than last year,' " Miguel Coumau, a Bordeaux-based wine broker, said, according to the Times. Graham Norton shared a £1m dividend with fellow shareholders of his So Television production company while paying himself more than £250,000. The company was founded in 2000 by the chat show host and fellow director Graham Stuart, who retain the bulk of the shares. In the year to the end of last July, So Television, which makes BBC1's Friday night flagship The Graham Norton Show as well as children's show Sorry I've Got No Head, reported profits up by more than nine per cent to £863,014, with turnover up eight per cent to £8.6m, reports the Daily Mail.The four businessmen in charge of MG Rover when it collapsed with the loss of thousands of jobs have been disqualified as directors for between three and six years. It follows an investigation into the so-called Phoenix Four's involvement in the former car giant, which collapsed in 2005 with the loss of 6,000 jobs, the Express reports.