BP and Rosneft have pledged to expand their Arctic development deal after asserting the agreement does not violate the terms of BP's prior tie up with Russian oligarchs. Signing a "strategic framework agreement" on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, BP and state-owned Rosneft said they would extend their partnership to work together in other countries as well as exploring the Arctic for oil, writes the Times.George Osborne's austerity Budget will push the UK back into recession unless the Government eases up on spending cuts, billionaire investor George Soros has warned. The hedge fund manager, most famous in the UK for "breaking the Bank of England" by betting against the then-Tory government remaining in Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, said Britain's austerity measures risked killing off economic growth, writes the Telegraph.Royal Bank of Scotland should be forced to sell off NatWest, according to the bank boss who orchestrated the historic acquisition more than a decade ago. The assertion by Sir George Mathewson, who was chief executive of the Edinburgh-based bank when the hostile takeover of NatWest was launched in 1999, is made in a submission to Sir John Vickers' commission on banking, the Guardian reports.Meanwhile, the Daily Mail reports that Royal Bank of Scotland believes its annual profits would be as much as £4.8bn lower were it forced to split its investment banking arm from the retail banking business. In a submission to the Independent Commission on banking - which is looking into whether banks are too large and should be knocked down to a more manageable size - the state-backed lender says having a 'universal' banking model is crucial to its earnings.Elsewhere in banks, the Barclays chairman, Marcus Agius, has lambasted Britain's banking watchdogs, accusing them of heaping additional rules on banks, beyond those agreed internationally, and damaging Britain's competitiveness and economy as a result. Writing to George Osborne, the Chancellor, in his capacity as chairman of the British Bankers' Association (BBA) Mr Agius said: "There has been considerable concern shown by the industry that this country is applying these requirements in a manner that is super-equivalent in the UK and so resulting in a non-level playing field, particularly with those countries with which we compete most critically," writes the Independent.The Federal Reserve kept US interest rates at a record low on Wednesday, as the central bank again voiced its concern that the recovery is not creating enough jobs. In addition to maintaining rates at between 0pc and 0.25pc, the Federal Reserve's Open Market Commitee - the group at the central bank that sets monetary policy - pledged to continue with its controversial $600bn (£378bn) programme of quantitative easing, writes the Telegraph.The success of the Apple's iPhone handset and iPad tablet, and the growing popularity of rival operating systems, prompted researchers at Gartner to predict that revenues from mobile apps would hit $15bn (£9.5bn) this year, says the Independent.Employers will find it easier to dismiss staff who have worked for less than two years under new plans to be outlined by Vince Cable today. The Business Secretary will set out four possible changes to employment law and tribunals in a consultation that the Government claimed would increase business confidence. Labour condemned the measures, saying that they would only increase instability and insecurity in the workplace, according to the Times.
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