BP Share News (BP.)

Directors at BP have begun canvassing shareholders about radical plans to restructure the oil giant in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.Options for "Future BP" include splitting up the group by selling its refineries and petrol stations, scaling back its American operations and ramping up in-house engineering instead of outsourcing. This will come on top of the sale of about 10% of its assets, including, as revealed by The Sunday Times last week, its stake in the giant Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska.The directors of Ocado were warned by their own bankers that offering shares to its own retail customers was a mistake that could undermine the planned initial public offering. Senior sources with a close understanding of the deal have said it is likely that the take-up from retail investors would be poor when the company announces the result of the IPO this week. It was initially estimated that up to £50m could be raised from Ocado's own customers, a figure that now appears to be closer to the £5m-£10m range. The deadline for applications was this weekend, the Telegraph reports. JP Morgan has raised serious concerns about its commitment to its new £1.5bn European headquarters at Canary Wharf because of anger within the bank at the lack of support for the financial sector in the UK. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of the American bank, is understood to have doubts about investing so heavily in London when there is uncertainty about future costs that could be imposed on banks. Some sources said the bank was "on the verge" of quitting the development, the Sunday Telegraph reports.Goldman Sachs is set to pay as much as 45% of its 2010 revenues, or $9bn, to its staff in a move that is likely to reignite political anger with the investment bank just days after it settled a high-profile fraud case with American regulators. Analysts expect Goldman to say that its closely-watched compensation ratio, which indicates the intended level of staff pay as a proportion of its revenues, is between 40% and 45% when it announces its second quarter results this week, the Sunday Telegraph. A British financier who dramatically cornered a huge chunk of the world'scocoa supply has been dubbed 'Choc Finger' by City traders. Anthony Ward, 50, who has amassed a £36m fortune, is a real-life Willy Wonka and now owns enough beans to manufacture 5.3bn quarter-pound chocolate bars. The holding is so massive it threatens to force manufacturers to raise the price of some of Britain's most popular chocolate. Armajaro Holdings, a hedge fund founded by multi-millionaire Mr Ward, pulled off the £658m purchase of 241,000 tons of cocoa beans, the Mail on Sunday reports.Worries about the American economy are replacing the eurozone crisis as the biggest fear for markets. Weak US data has led to concern that it could be heading for a double dip. Sentiment in the eurozone has improved after successful government bond auctions by some of its crisis-hit peripheral members and the expectation that the results of the stress tests for European banks, to be released this Friday, will be fairly trouble-free, Yesterday Greece's central bank governor, George Provopoulos, said he expected a clean bill of health for the country's banks. "My feeling is that things will go smoothly for the six Greek banks included in the sample," he said. He was also optimistic about the country's public finances, the Sunday Times reports.Easyjet's punctuality has slipped alarmingly this year, with industry figures showing that fewer than 50% of its flights at Gatwick, its main base, departed on time last month. In June, 48% of its international flights departed on time ? within 15 minutes of its advertised schedule. That was worse than Air Zimbabwe, which managed 50% on time, and considerably worse than British Airways, which hit 85.7%. The revelation will stoke the furore about the state of Easyjet's operations, the Sunday Times reports.Richard Desmond, owner of the Daily Express and OK! magazine, is putting the finishing touches to a £100m deal to take over Five, the struggling TV channel, within days. The acquisition will transform the influence of Desmond, who made much of his £950m fortune selling top-shelf titles such as Penthouse and Asian Babes. He has beaten competition for Five from big names including Time Warner, Channel 4 and Endemol, the producer behind Big Brother, the Sunday Times reports.The EU plans to raise loans to the UK's 10 biggest water utilities by 60% to €4bn (£3.4bn) as they try to reduce the number of customers who cannot pay their bills. The companies, which include FTSE 100 stalwarts United Utilities and Severn Trent, take advantage of cheap EU loans to reduce "water poverty"- where a bill accounts for more than 3% of household spending. Last year, the value of bills left unpaid for more than 12 months was £804m, up 16% on 2008, the Sunday Independent reports.Softbank, a Japanese bank, is facing major losses on its 23% stake in Betfair, the online betting exchange which is hoping to float in the autumn. The British business, one of the UK's few successes during the dotcom era, has hired Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to advise on the listing, which could value the company at £1.5bn, the Sunday Independent reports.