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Although still in the minority, a handful of leading experts believe the Bank of England (BoE) will come under pressure to raise rates towards the end of 2013 - 18 months earlier than markets are predicting. Simon Ward, chief UK economist at Henderson Global Investors, said rates will rise from their current record low of 0.5 per cent to 1 per cent in the second half of the year. Andrew Lilico, at Europe Economics, said he hopes "we finally get a rise", and Andrew Sentance, a former member of the Monetary Policy Committee, said that inflation should be brought more firmly under control and interest rate rises should be "on the agenda". Mr Ward has a track record of correctly predicting interest rate increases, even when it is against consensus opinion. In January 2007, he was the only one of 50 economists who successfully predicted the Bank would lift rates from 5 per cent to 5.25 per cent, The Sunday Telegraph writes. Dalton Philips, chief executive of Wm Morrison, told The Daily Telegraph businesses "would have gone bust" if they had behaved with the same intransigence as the Government displayed over Sunday opening hours. Morrisons along with other supermarket groups attempted to make the most of yesterday's six hour shopping limit. Tesco had 5,000 office staff helping out in the stores and re-opened its biggest shops at midnight last night to take full advantage of Christmas Eve trading. Sainsbury's unofficially extended trading with a "lock-in hour" to enable late shoppers to stock up. Supermarket groups have been the most vocal in the efforts by retailers to persuade the Government to make Sunday, December 23rd a "special case" in relaxing trading restrictions. Amid fears that a tide of Euroscepticism could sweep London towards the exit, Wolfgang Schäuble urged Britain to avoid a referendum on EU membership that would create "uncertainty". "I would wish for more British involvement in Europe, not less," he said in an interview with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, The Sunday Telegraph reports. "We want to keep Britain in the EU and not push it out." However, Mr Schäuble cautioned that any attempt to "blackmail" Germany with threats of an exit would not be tolerated. "Our British friends are not dangerous, but a referendum would create uncertainty," he added. Facebook funnelled £440m into a tax haven last year in an effort to sidestep the tax authorities in Britain and other big markets. The move enabled the social networking giant to pay a mere £2.9m of corporation tax on more than £800m of overseas profits in 2011, according to accounts for its Irish subsidiary. In Britain it paid less than £240,000. The scale of Facebook's tax avoidance is likely to fuel anger over the affairs of multinational companies that ruthlessly exploit loopholes to avoid the taxman. This month Starbucks was forced into a climb-down after it emerged that the coffee chain had paid no corporation tax in Britain for three years. To avoid a boycott, it promised to pay about £20m to the exchequer in 2013 and 2014, The Sunday Times reports. ITV, the broadcaster, will buy 61.5% of Gurney Productions, with an option to buy the rest of the group in the next five years. Gurney was founded in 2005 by Scott and Deirdre Gurney and has become a leading independent producer of reality and factual TV series for US cable networks. The company's portfolio includes Duck Dynasty - currently one of the biggest cable TV shows in the US. "Growing ITV Studios is a key part of our strategy to rebalance the group," Adam Crozier, ITV's chief executive said. "Our studios business is already showing strong organic growth and the acquisition of Gurney is an important step forward as we continue to expand our international production capability." Mr Crozier said the US was seen as a key creative market and having a sizeable presence there was central to the expansion of ITV's global content business. More than 6,000 jobs are close to being saved with the rescue of part of Britain's biggest meat processor. Endless, the turnaround firm, has entered exclusive talks to buy the poultry business of Vion. The private Dutch company, one of the world's largest meat processors, put its British operations up for sale earlier this year amid mounting losses. The negotiations come weeks after Endless, best known for reviving Crown Paints, snapped up Vion's pork operations, securing 5,000 jobs. Vion is one of the biggest suppliers of meat and poultry to British supermarkets, but consumption dipped during the recession while soaring grain prices have pushed up the cost of animal feed, the industry's single biggest input, The Sunday Times explains. A US judge has given final approval to BP's $7.8bn (£4.8bn) part settlement with businesses and individuals who suffered losses following its disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The settlement resolves most private individual's claims for economic loss and property damage, but it doesn't cover lawsuits brought by the US government or those brought by the states of Alabama and Louisiana. US District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans granted final approval to the settlement after he considered objections following its preliminary approval in May. Some 13,000 out of the more than 100,000 individuals involved in the class action lawsuit had challenged the settlement. "None of the objections, whether filed on the objections docket or elsewhere, have shown the settlement to be anything other than fair, reasonable and adequate," Judge Barbier said, The Sunday Telegraph says. AB