Lloyds Share News (LLOY)

The Spanish-led consortium bidding for National Express is set to withdraw its £765m takeover offer for the bus and rail operator, dealing a blow to the company's biggest shareholder.CVC, the private equity firm, and the Cosmen family, which owns an 18.5% stake, had been due to finish due diligence by 5pm on Friday before making a formal offer for National Express.A Takeover Panel ruling had extended a "put up or shut up" deadline for an offer from September 11, the FT reports.Hundreds of thousands of victims of the Equitable Life scandal may be in line for government compensation after all, following a High Court ruling against the Treasury yesterday. Two senior judges said the Treasury had acted unlawfully earlier this year in rejecting many of the findings of the Parliamentary Ombudsman, Ann Abraham up to a million victims whose savings were depleted should receive compensation, the Independent reports.The Chancellor stands to receive £2bn of Goldman Sachs's record-breaking compensation pool if the Wall Street bank continues its winning streak. A spokesman said that Goldman Sachs and its British bankers would hand over about £2bn in corporate and personal tax for 2009 if the bank continued accruing compensation at the present rate. This is equivalent to tax payments of £370,700 for each of Goldman Sachs's 5,500 London-based workers, the Times reports.Goldman Sachs acknowledged on Thursday that public anger about Wall Street's bonus culture will constrain how much it will pay the top five executives of the bank, whose compensation has to be disclosed publicly. The comments by David Viniar, chief financial officer, during a conference call to discuss Goldman's $3.2bn third-quarter profits is a concession that the bank's end-of-year bonus decisions will be affected by politics, the FT added.The Royal Mail is preparing to impose changes on its staff with the full backing of the Government, a leaked document revealed last night. The disclosure came as the Communication Workers Union confirmed that it was calling out 120,000 Royal Mail employees on a two-day strike, which it said was aimed at maximising disruption. About 42,000 network drivers and mail centre staff are due to hold a 24-hour strike on Thursday, while on Friday 78,000 delivery and collection staff will walk out for 24 hours, the Times reports. Lloyds Banking Group may sell about 200 bank branches in Scotland as part of its agreement with the European Commission over the billions of pounds of state aid it has received. A plan to hive off Lloyds TSB Scotland is being seriously discussed by the Treasury and Brussels. Divesting the business would cut Lloyds' dominant position in current accounts by about 2%, the Times reports.The British people are living in a fool's paradise and have yet to understand the gravity of the economic crisis, according a former head of the Financial Services Authority. Sir Howard Davies, now Director of the London School of Economics, said Britain faces a dangerous rise in the levels of public debt - even taking into account tax increases planned for coming years, the Telegraph reports.Google delivered a profit of $1.64bn (£1bn) in the three months to September, on sales of $5.94bn, up from $5.52bn in the second quarter, the search engine's biggest quarter-on-quarter revenue growth in more than a year. The results were sharply ahead of analysts' expectations, pushing Google's shares - already up 84% since mid-March - $12.15 higher to $542.06 in after-hours trading in New York. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said that it saw a 30pc quarter-over-quarter rise in mobile searches,the Telegraph reports.Shares in J Sainsbury rose almost 20% during trading on Thursday on speculation that the UK's third-largest supermarket chain was once again in the sights of the Qatar Investment Authority.The shares closed up 31.4p, or 10 per cent, at 342.5p, after some 71m shares changed hands. The rise was driven by speculation that the Qataris were plotting another bid at about 425p a share - valuing Sainsbury at £7.9bn - working with Roger Jenkins, the former Barclays executive, the FT reports.Sir James Dyson, champion of British industrial design, has launched his latest invention aimed at catapulting the conventional electric desk fan into the 21st century. His "Air Multiplier" fan boasts reduced energy consumption and no external blades. British consumers have been invited to pre-register their interest in the latest example of innovation by the designer, the FT reports.Germany's leading institutes have warned that the pace of economic recovery is "unsustainable" and that the country's banks may face a fresh crisis over the next year as bad debts surface in earnest. There is still a significant risk of further shocks to the international financial system,' said a joint report by the five 'Wise Men', a panel that advises the government, the Telegraph reports.