Lloyds Share News (LLOY)

The big freeze shattered some retailers' hopes of a 'Super Saturday' as treacherous conditions kept shoppers away in some parts of the country. The Trafford Centre in Manchester reported high numbers of customers but Bluewater in Kent said numbers were down compared with last year. Brent Cross shopping centre, in North London, was forced to close. Up to 10m shoppers were expected to hit the malls and high streets as stores launched their sales early to make up for business lost in the big freeze, the Mail on Sunday reports.Anglo American is weighing up a multi-billion-pound plan to take control of De Beers, the world's largest diamond company, by buying out South Africa's Oppenheimer family. Big institutional shareholders in Anglo, a mining giant listed in London and South Africa, are pushing its management to "tidy up" its investment in De Beers. Anglo owns 40%, the government of Botswana 15% and the Oppenheimers 45%. City sources said that while a spin-off of De Beers had been considered, it was more likely that Anglo would buy out the family and make De Beers part of its core operations. The Oppenheimer stake is difficult to value, but it could cost Anglo at least £2bn, the Sunday Times reports.Royal Bank of Scotland plans to pay an estimated £1bn in bonuses to its investment bankers early in the new year, inflaming the political row over City pay. George Osborne, the chancellor, and business secretary Vince Cable will hold a showdown with Britain's banks tomorrow to attempt to negotiate a truce over bonuses. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Cable vowed a further clampdown on "completely unjustified" City pay deals. He wants new measures on top of strict new rules published on Friday by the Financial Services Authority.An American tycoon is set to raise his £3bn offer for Capital Shopping Centres (CSC), Britain's largest owner of malls, including Lakeside in Essex. On Wednesday, Simon broke cover with a proposal to buy CSC for 425p a share. CSC rejected the approach. Simon could now table an improved takeover offer of about 435p a share, valuing CSC at £3.1bn, the Sunday Times reports. Simon has until 12 January to make a firm bid. Regulators in Brussels have signalled that they are preparing to hand a major victory to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in its £7.8bn bid to take over the rest of BSkyB by declaring that the deal would not be anti-competitive within the European Union. The European Commission, which has set itself a deadline of December 22 to report on the impact of the proposed deal, have not found any significant competition problems, according to sources close to the situation, the Sunday Telegraph reports.Bank of America has halted all transactions for WikiLeaks, joining other institutions that refuse to process payments for the website that has exposed a trove of US government cables. "Bank of America joins in the actions previously announced by MasterCard, PayPal, Visa Europe and others and will not process transactions of any type that we have reason to believe are intended for WikiLeaks," the largest US bank said in a statement, the Sunday Telegraph reports.Ladbrokes has made a £240m takeover approach to online gaming company 888 in the first strategic move by its new chief executive, Richard Glynn. The bookmaker has proposed an offer of around 70p a share for 888 - the internet casino and poker group that it originally tried to buy four years ago in a £470m deal. Should the deal happen, it would be Ladbrokes' first acquisition since the bookmaker was spun out of the Hilton hotels group in 2005, the Sunday Telegraph reports.Lloyds Banking Group's outgoing chief executive, Eric Daniels, is to launch a major drive to improve the transparency of the lender's financial products in his last three months at the helm of Britain's largest retail bank. Ahead of a banking summit with George Osborne and Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, this week, Mr Daniels also revealed that he believed that competition between the main high-street lenders should be improved by making it easier for customers to switch accounts, the Sunday Telegraph reports.Abu Dhabi is in talks to acquire a 20% stake in the London Stock Exchange as part of an attempt to take control of the financial services industry in the Middle East. The oil-rich Gulf state, part of the United Arab Emirates, is understood to have made a $1.5bn (£966m) offer to buy out the financial empire of its heavily-indebted neighbour, Dubai. The proposed deal would see a merger of the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange with the Dubai International Financial Centre and Borse Dubai, which owns the stake in the London exchange, the Sunday Times reports.A British private equity group is putting together a €12bn (£10bn) takeover bid for Abertis, the Spanish infrastructure giant, in the latest sign that giant buyout deals are returning in Europe. CVC, which already has investments in Formula One and Saga, the insurer for the over-fifties, has lined up banks to finance a deal for the owner of Luton and Cardiff airports, the Sunday Times reports.Baristas at Starbucks' British outlets stand to collect millions of pounds worth of free shares, dubbed "Bean Stock", next year as part of an incentive scheme being launched by the American coffee chain. The Seattle-based firm's 6,700 UK staff are eligible for the shares award, which replaces a more complicated option scheme that was seen to have deterred workers of its shopworkers from taking part, the Observer reports.