Lloyds Share News (LLOY)

The European Central Bank executed an embarrassing U-turn on its lending rules yesterday in order to stave off the collapse of the Greek banking system.In a statement the ECB said that it was suspending a rule preventing it accepting junk-rated government bonds in return for loans. It said that the indefinite suspension applied to Greek government debt only, the Times reports.BP felt the full impact of growing investor fears about the fallout from the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster yesterday with its American Depository Receipts (ADRs) falling as much as 9% in New York. The shares fell despite Tony Hayward, chief executive, mounting a damage limitation exercise working the US chat show circuit and flying to Washington for top level talks.The fallout will be reflected in London today amid growing worries that BP could face a $16bn (£10.6bn) compensation and clean-up bill and a gruelling session before a US Senate committee hearing into the accident next week, the Telegraph reports.Lloyds Banking Group has this year become the biggest provider of loans for private equity-backed takeovers of companies in Europe, outpacing rivals that were league table leaders at the height of the credit boom and nearly tripling the share of the market it had in 2007. The buy-out loans are expected to contribute significantly to Lloyds meeting its target for lending to businesses, the FT reports.Fifa, soccer's governing body, expects this year's World Cup in South Africa to generate a net gain of $1bn in income thanks to commercial deals but is eager not to call it a profit, its secretary-general has told the Financial Times. Jerome Valcke said the 2010 tournament would generate $3.3bn (€2.5bn, £2.2bn) in income from commercial deals, and see Fifa spend $1.2bn on the tournament, including $700m spent in South Africa, the FT reports.Apple, which launched its hand-held tablet computer on April 3, announced yesterday that it has sold more than 1m iPads. The one millionth sale was on Friday. So far the early owners have downloaded more than 12m applications from Apple's app store and 1.5m electronic books from its new iBookstore, the Telegraph reports.Clive Cowdery, the insurance entrepreneur, has lined up billions of pounds of financing to fund a potential bid for Prudential's UK assets. The boss of Resolution has secured agreement from the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Canada to provide the cash for a deal that could be worth £5bn, the Telegraph reports.The publisher Pearson is preparing to launch its own social network to capitalise on the success of a website designed to encourage reading among teenagers. Pearson, which owns Penguin Books and the Financial Times, set up Spinebreakers as an "online book community for teens" in September 2007 and plans a significant overhaul to allow users to connect to each other before the end of the year, the Independent reports.United Airlines has agreed a $3.2bn merger with its domestic rival Continental Airlines in a deal that will create the world's largest carrier by traffic. The merger could also hasten attempts by British Airways to forge closer links with American Airlines, its transatlantic rival. A combined United-Continental will have about a fifth of the American airline market and about 7 per cent internationally, the Times reports.Shareholders hammered the board and top executives of Goldman Sachs for gross mismanagement of the beleaguered bank, accusing them of lying about damaging fraud charges and unjustly enriching themselves at investors' expense, in a series of legal actions revealed yesterday. In a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Goldman said that lawsuits started pouring in on April 22, six days after the Wall Street bank and one of its traders were charged by the SEC over the sale of a synthetic collateralised debt obligation called Abacus that lost two investors $1bn, the Times reports.Legal actions against estate agents and surveyors reached record levels last year, as property owners counted the cost of steep falls in the values of their assets. There were 25 High Court cases alleging professional negligence over valuations of residential or commercial property last year, according to Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, the law firm. This compared with only one case in the previous five years, the Times reports.