3i Group Share News (III)

Ahead of a major speech on the issue on Monday, George Osborne is still negotiating with Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, on the exact detail of a reserve power the Government could use if banks were found to be abusing new regulations. Figures close to the Chancellor said he would not back a "blanket power" to split all banks, but would allow it only for institutions found to have broken the rules. The move will anger Britain's leading banks, which say they are under so much regulatory pressure they are less able to support growth by lending and that a "reserve power" will increase doubt, The Sunday Telegraph reports. One of Britain's fastest-growing oil explorers has hatched an ambitious plan for a break-up. Afren, the £1.7bn FTSE 250 company, has hired Steen Associates, a corporate finance firm, to sell its sought-after oil fields in Kurdistan and east Africa for up to £1bn. The disposal would leave the company with a rump centred on its operations in Nigeria. Both Kurdistan and east Africa are enjoying oil booms after a string of discoveries. Big companies, desperate to get in, have paid huge prices for toeholds. Both Sinopec, the Chinese giant, and Exxon, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, have been tipped as suitors. Steen is looking at alternatives to the asset sale plan as well. Afren declined to comment. Oryx Petroleum, another oil explorer with assets in Nigeria and Kurdistan, is close to a float. The company founded by Jean Claude Gandur, a Swiss billionaire, has hired RBC Capital Markets to list it in Toronto, according to The Sunday Times.Top investors in 3i, the listed private equity juggernaut, have rallied round the Chief Executive as a serial corporate raider threatens to pounce. Edward Bramson was last week revealed to have built a stake in 3i through his fund, Sherborne Investors. He is believed to have bought just over 2% of 3i, which backs companies ranging from Agent Provocateur, the lingerie brand, to Foster + Partners, the architects. Last March, 3i suffered an investor rebellion after years of dire performance and a refusal to hand back cash to shareholders. The Chief Executive, Michael Queen, was replaced by Simon Borrows, a former investment banker, who has begun cutting jobs and sharpening strategy, The Sunday Times says. Antonio Horta-Osorio, the Chief Executive of Lloyds Banking Group, has written to the Justice Secretary demanding the ballooning costs of false payment protection insurance claims are shared by the claims management companies that are often behind them. The letter, sent in mid-November, said that while the bank is happy to continue to pay the £850 for cases that are proven to be valid, claims management companies (CMCs) should cover the costs for those they lodge which are proven to be invalid or bogus. Under the current system, Lloyds and its peers have to pick up the Ombudsman's costs, whether they are found to have mis-sold or not. A source indicated that the letter "focused on the concept that the CMCs are getting a free ride," The Sunday Telegraph says. Tidjane Thiam, the chief executive of Prudential, has told Mr Carney, the Bank of England´s Governor-in-waiting, that ultra-loose monetary policy is an "amazing distortion". "Quantitative easing was a good short-term fix," Mr Thiam said at a private breakfast last week. "In 2008, 2009 and 2010 it was the right answer. But now, it is different. "We are just storing long-term trouble by minimising short-term pain." The Prudential CEO, who met Mr Carney at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, said that the deepening market distortions created by quantitative easing had a negative effect on growth and damaged savers. Mr Thiam said that there was now a reliance on cheap money without a sensible exit plan, The Sunday Telegraph reports. The RBoS Shareholders Action Group has revealed that up to 4,000 extra private investors have now joined the lawsuit, taking the total to about 12,000 compared with 8,000 last autumn. In addition, the group says close to 100 institutional investors are involved compared with a little over 90 a few months back, with hopes the figure could go higher. RBoS sources said the action group was hopeful the case could open later this month or early spring, and that the claim may now exceed £3.5 billion. Previous reported estimates of the suit ranged ?between £2.5bn and £3.3bn. The action group alleges shareholders were misled about the financial strength of taxpayer-funded RBS when it launched its £12bn rights issue in April 2008, The Scotsman on Sunday says. Analysts expect BP's fourth-quarter underlying profits to be $3.3bn, down from $5bn in the same period of 2011. The oil major signed a landmark deal to sell its 50% stake in TNK-BP in return for cash and Rosneft shares in October and so will be able to book just 21 days' income for the quarter for a venture that contributed $1bn in net income the year before. The impact of other asset sales will also weigh on earnings and BP is expected to be missing some high-margin oil production due to maintenance work. Analysts will be attempting to strip out the impact of disposals to assess the health of the underlying business, with Deutsche Bank warning that, with so many "moving parts", forecasting BP's results was "more art than science," according to The Sunday Telegraph.Britain´s biggest mobile phone company is finalising plans for a £10bn stock market float this year. The French and German owners of Everything Everywhere are close to appointing advisers to arrange the huge deal, according to industry and banking sources. Deutsche Telekom and France Télécom are expected to bank more than £1bn each by selling 25% of their British venture, recently renamed EE, on the London Stock Exchange. The sale, which could go ahead as soon as September, would be the biggest listing in London since Glencore, the commodities trading house, went public two years ago, writes The Sunday Times.The Sunday Telegraph understands that after talks with its own investors, RBS is now pushing ahead with a £1bn initial public offering (IPO) of the business, known internally as Project Rainbow. The decision, taken in the past fortnight, will end the three-month twin-track process which has seen the bank attempt to find trade bidders to begin an auction for Rainbow, which includes 1.8m retail bank customers and 250,000 business accounts. RBS is selling the business at the behest of the European Commission. Senior banking sources confirmed an IPO is now the "main option", despite strong interest from Virgin Money, and several private equity firms. UK Financial Investments, which manages the Government's 81% stake in RBS, is understood to be backing the push for a stock market float.An African oil explorer backed by Glencore that was fined £6m for bribing government officials is close to launching a £700m float in London. Griffiths Energy had intended to list a year ago but cancelled its plans after an internal probe revealed that it had paid $2m (£1.3m) in bribes to gain access to oilfields in Chad, the landlocked African nation that is ranked among the top 10 most corrupt countries by Transparency International, the campaign group. The bribery allegations emerged just months after the company's founder, Brad Griffiths, a prominent Canadian financier, died in a boating accident, The Sunday Times explains.AB