Lloyds Share News (LLOY)

Directors at Easyjet are weighing the payment of a one-off special dividend in November to cool a row with Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the airline's founder and biggest shareholder.The budget airline has never paid a dividend in its 11-year history as a quoted company. Last year The Sunday Times revealed it would start regular payouts, the size of which will be announced at the full-year results in November, the Sunday Times reports.Bank of England policymakers could be forced to unleash a fresh wave of quantitative easing (QE) before the end of the year as Britain's fragile economy is battered by the eurozone crisis and the US slowdown, experts warn. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, disappointed investors' hopes of a new round of the recession-busting policy in a speech on Friday, instead urging President Obama to direct federal spending towards a new job-creation package, the Observer says.Thousands of fishermen and business owners in a multi-billion-dollar legal battle with BP over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill have won the right to sue for punitive damages, in a fresh defeat for the oil major. More than 100,000 individuals, companies and authorities have filed cases claiming they suffered economic loss as a result of the leak last year, says the Sunday Telegraph.Europe's banks need an urgent injection of fresh funds to prevent a "debilitating liquidity crisis", Christine Lagarde, the new head of the International Monetary Fund, warned yesterday. She said that the recapitalisation of banks should become mandatory, using the bailout funds set aside for Greece, Ireland and Portugal if private money could not be found, according to the Sunday Times.Labour is to push for tighter controls on media takeovers following the collapse of Rupert Murdoch's bid for BSkyB. The party wants to broaden the grounds on which a bid for a broadcaster or newspaper publisher can be blocked, by introducing a wide-ranging test to assess if the change of ownership is in the public interest, says the Sunday Telegraph.People on the dole for more than a year should be forced to take a job at the minimum wage - or lose their benefits, a report published today urges. The proposal from a Labour-leaning think-tank comes after figures showed that the number of long-term unemployed had doubled to 400,000 since the recession, the Sunday Express reports.Debt-laden fashion retailer New Look has embarked on a property review as part of its turnaround as the search for a new chief executive gets under way. Group property director Richard White, who joined the business in February, has begun a review of the 604-store estate in the UK, the Independent on Sunday reports.Lloyds, which stands to lose millions of pounds in the collapse of von Essen, was warned that the luxury hotel chain was at risk of failing under the weight of its debts more than a year before it was forced to call in the administrators. Experts from a major restructuring firm say they contacted the bank early last year, telling it that borrowings looked very high compared with assets. The firm offered to look into the health of the 28-hotel chain, which includes Cliveden in Berkshire and the Royal Crescent, Bath, says the Mail on Sunday.---RG