Barclays Share News (BARC)

The Bank of England is heading for a showdown with Barclays this week over threats from the high street giant to rein in its lending. Antony Jenkins, Chief Executive of Barclays, warned on Friday that if the Bank presses ahead with a new capital rule it could be forced to "restrict" loans to households and businesses. His comments provoked a furious reaction from Andrew Bailey, Chief Executive of the Bank's new Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), The Sunday Times reports.A group of managers at Britain's biggest drug maker - GlaxoSmithKline - are being investigated by Chinese police for alleged "economic crimes." Police in Changsha apparently told the official Xinhua News Agency that it had launched the probe into "senior managers" at GSK China. But the allegations remain a mystery, even to the company, according to The Sunday Telegraph. BP's bill for the costs associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico could reach tens of billions of dollars more than it has already spent, reckons a Gulf state official. Garret Graves, responsible for coastal affairs for Louisiana's governor, Bobby Jindal, said BP's eventual bill for the rig explosion in 2010 'could easily reach tens of billions of dollars' in addition to the $25bn that the company has paid already for cleaning up and compensation, The Financial Mail on Sunday writes.Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians flooded the streets of Cairo and cities across the country to call on the country's Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, to step down in the toughest challenge he has faced since his election with a slim majority a year ago. There was a festive atmosphere as the numbers swelled up enormously and the realisation set in that the opposition, dismissed as puny by the Islamists, demonstrated it could mobilise a massive turnout against the president, The Financial Times reports.One of Britain's biggest pub companies has been put up for sale at a price of up to £300m. Orchid, which runs more than 250 pubs and restaurants, is working with advisers at Sapient, a corporate finance firm, to find a buyer. It is being sold by Deutsche Bank, which took control last year after a debt-for-equity swap ? the pub company's second restructuring in four years. It had previously been owned by GI Partners, a private equity firm, The Sunday Times writes.The likely winner of Norway's looming elections is floating the idea of splitting the world's largest sovereign wealth fund in two, as the $720bn oil fund grapples with the challenges of growing ever bigger. Such a move would be the most radical change to the oil fund since it was set up more than two decades ago to manage Norway's oil and gas revenues. At the start, few expected the fund to receive much money but it has grown rapidly in the last few years on the back of rising oil revenues and is expected to reach $1trn by the end of the decade, making it by far the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, The Financial Times says.Standard Chartered may take a $1bn-plus (£658m) hit on its Korean business, analysts have warned ahead of an internal assessment by the London-listed, Asia-centric bank. Standard, one of the few UK banks not ordered by the Prudential Regulation Authority to beef up its capital cushions, flagged up a more radical shake-up of its business in Korea, The Scotsman on Sunday says.