Lloyds Share News (LLOY)

Taxpayers will receive a "handsome" reward for bailing out the banks, according to the heads of Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland. Yet they criticised ongoing talk of the banks being too big to fail as a "red herring". The outgoing Lloyds chief executive Eric Daniels appeared in front of the Commons Public Accounts Committee alongside Stephen Hester, his counterpart at RBS, the Independent reports.The yen soared to its highest level against the dollar since the second world war, as investors grew more confident that Japanese will sell foreign assets and bring money home for reconstruction efforts. Central bankers and finance ministers from the Group of Seven high-income countries were expected to hold a call as early as Thursday to discuss the impact of the Japanese earthquake on the global economy and markets, says the Financial Times.Brent crude jumped on Wednesday after Iran called an attack by Bahrain security forces on protesters "unjustifiable", raising tensions between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims in the oil rich region. Benchmark crude for one-month delivery was trading at $110.37 a barrel at lunchtime in London, up from a three-week low near $107 earlier in the day, the Telegraph reports.The government should allow building on the green belt and scrap stamp duty to prevent house price bubbles and crashes, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has said. In its latest assessment of the British economy, the OECD said that while the Government's planned spending cuts were welcome, further significant reforms were needed to ensure sustained economic growth and stability, reports the Times.Rolls-Royce has won its first new order for the Trent 900 since the failure of one of the engines on a Qantas A380 flight last year. Asiana Airlines, the South Korean carrier, said yesterday that it had ordered Trent 900s for six A380s in a deal that is likely to be worth more than $1bn, the Times reports.Britain's pharmaceutical industry suffered a fresh blow yesterday as Novartis announced plans to restructure its operations in a move that could lead to the loss of 600 jobs. The Swiss drugmaker said that it would begin negotiations with staff on the future of its research and manufacturing site at Horsham, West Sussex, according to the Times.Nearly 17,000 staff at Greggs are to share a bonus pot of £5.8m after the bakery chain delivered record profits last year. The average pay-out will be £400 to each of its 16,800 employees, depending on their length of service, says the Independent.Tesco's UK chief executive, Richard Brasher, has claimed that the "inexorable rise of fuel prices", as well as other rising household costs, add up to a 5% rise in income tax for poorer families. Filling up at the pumps, as well as higher utilities bills and taxes, is estimated to be costing households £12 more a week than last year and Brasher said the squeeze on disposable incomes was a "real challenge" for Tesco's customers, says the Guardian.The price of consumer electronic goods such as computers, mobile phones and DVDs could rise across the world due to shortage of electronic components from disaster-hit Japan, experts warn. There are already signs of an increase in the price of memory chips and display panels for computers and game consoles due to problems at Japanese factories, according to the Guardian.People hit with an unexpected tax demand may be able to refuse to pay up as HM Revenue & Customs could have exceeded its own time limits in which to ask for the money, experts said. Under tax rules HMRC must issue demands for underpaid tax within 12 months of the end of the tax year in which it became aware that people had underpaid. It emerged over the weekend that nearly 6m people have paid the wrong amount of tax through the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system, says the Daily Mail.