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Political paralysis in Brussels and monetary tightening by the European Central Bank has set off a fresh spasm of the eurozone bond crisis, pushing spreads on Portuguese, Irish and Greek bonds to post-EMU records. Portugal edged closer to the brink yesterday, having to pay almost 6pc to raise two-year debt. The yield on 10-year bonds briefly surged to 7.8pc after the Chinese rating agency Dagong downgraded the country's debt to BBB+, the Telegraph reports.The Government's austerity policies have restored investor confidence in UK public finances and may have averted a gilts crisis, according Britain's top debt manager. Robert Stheeman, head of the UK Debt Management Office, said the picture has brightened so much over the last year that gilts have benefited from "safe-haven flows," says the Telegraph.Rex Tillerson, chief executive of ExxonMobil, has attacked Bob Dudley, his counterpart at BP, over his assessment of the lessons from the Deepwater Horizon disaster last year. Speaking as Exxon made its annual presentation to analysts, Mr Tillerson accused Mr Dudley of doing "a great disservice" to the oil industry and its employees by suggesting that the disaster had implications for all of them. The cause of the accident was "a breakdown of management oversight of that well", Mr Tillerson said, according to the Financial Times.The government has censured BP for failing to investigate alleged human rights abuses along the route of the controversial Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline from the Caspian to the Mediterranean. Environmental and human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth, claimed victory in the long-running case, after the government upheld a complaint that the oil company failed to act on evidence of intimidation by Turkish security forces along the 1,768km BTC pipeline, more than half of which runs through Turkey, the Guardian reports.Major banks are refusing to tell the Financial Services Authority how many of their staff are paid more than £1m. Hector Sants, chief executive of the City regulator, told the Treasury select committee that "four of the larger banks" were not complying with his request to provide more information about how their top bankers are paid. He did not identify the banks, according to the Guardian.Nine out of ten mortgages are variable rate loans, raising fears that a far higher proportion of borrowers will be hit by interest rate rises than official figures suggest, an investment manager said yesterday. Only 1.2m of a total 11.7m mortgages are fixed-rate deals, according to Legal & General. The remaining loans are being charged variable interest rates, meaning that the vast majority of borrowers will face an increase in their monthly repayments if interest rates rise, says the Times.Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire hedge fund manager at the centre of one of the biggest insider trading prosecutions in US history, was driven by "greed and corruption" to use an illegal network of sources to make millions in illegal trading profits, a Manhattan court heard on Wednesday. In his opening remarks in the case against Mr Rjaratnam, Jonathan Streeter, the lead prosecutor, said that Mr Rajaratnam "bought business information" from his sources to gain an edge over ordinary investors and "traded on such information again and again and again," the Times reports.Central Saint Martins (CSM) has teamed up with US design consultancy Method to bring the brightest ideas from its students to market and potentially find "the next Facebook, Google or Apple" in the UK. Method Design Lab was established today to create and develop products, services and companies from sources including the design college's body of more than 4,500 students. The venture is raising £20m from private investors to bring what it hopes will be up to 20 projects to market every year, the Independent reports.The UK's video games trade body has opened up a second front in its campaign for tax breaks from the Government, proposing measures backed by the former Labour cabinet minister Stephen Timms. Tiga has published a report today calling for improvements to the research and development tax credits. The measures could deliver up to 75 per cent more value to games studios, it said, adding: "This would enable studios to invest more in R&D, generate and retain new intellectual property, and hire more development staff", the Independent reports.The German energy group that supplies electricity and gas to more than a quarter of British households has reported a 71 per cent surge in UK profits to more than £450 million, only weeks after raising its prices. E.ON's biggest profits in Britain for years come as Ofgem ends a four-month investigation into the margins that the big six energy suppliers are making, the Times reports.