Lloyds Share News (LLOY)

First-time buyers are to be helped on to the housing ladder as George Osborne seeks to use today's Budget to ease the pain of austerity Britain.Ten thousand people buying newly built homes will receive 20% of the cost from the Government and the builder in low-interest loans to put towards a deposit. Mr Osborne hopes that the change ? part of the Government's strategy for growth ? will help to support 40,000 construction jobs. The Chancellor will also announce plans to lift 250,000 low earners out of paying income tax and pledge that no one earning less than £42,000 will be pushed into the higher tax band before 2015, the Times reports. George Osborne is expected to put tax breaks for companies and hard-pressed families at the heart of Wednesday's Budget but his scope for giveaways is constrained by a sombre backdrop of rising inflation and weakening tax revenues. The chancellor has promised a "Budget for growth" and could accelerate cuts to corporation tax, reinforcing Mr Osborne's pledge to give Britain one of the world's most competitive tax regimes. Mr Osborne has promised to cut the main corporation tax rate by 1 percentage point annually, with plans to cut it to 27 per cent in April at a cost of £400m. Treasury officials refused to confirm or deny suggestions that the chancellor may move faster, the FT reports.Key holders of bonds in Punch Taverns have reacted angrily to plans by the debt-laden pub group to spin off its managed pubs arm into a separately listed business by the end of the summer. However, a committee of bond investors, including Aegon, Aviva, BlackRock, Legal & General, M&G and Standard Life, and organised under the aegis of the Association of British Insurers, said: "This strategic review does nothing to address the issues in the tenanted estate and is a 'walkaway' from them. We remain concerned to see the real issues in the operating businesses addressed fast," the FT reports.Ofcom has moved to protect competition in the mobile phone market by structuring the "4G" auction to protect Britain's smallest network. The sale of the spectrum ? the frequencies that carry signals ? will lay the foundations for the next 20 years of mobile phone usage and could raise up to £4bn for the Treasury. Bidding is due to start early next year and services are expected to be available in 2013, the Times reports.A judge in New York has rejected a controversial settlement between Google, authors and publishers, dealing a blow to the search engine's ambitions to put millions of books online. Judge Denny Chin said that the 2009 class action settlement would go too far in allowing Google "to exploit entire books, without permission of the copyright owners". The case centres on an ambitious plan started by Google in 2004 to scan and index the world's literary heritage, the Times reports.A planned crackdown on the mortgage market that critics say would have left millions of borrowers unable to raise home loans has been watered down. The Financial Services Authority said yesterday that it was abandoning a proposed new rule that would have forced lenders to turn down applicants unable to demonstate their ability to repay all the money within 25 years. The rule would have applied to borrowers even when taking on a 30-year mortgage or an interest-only loan. The FSA also promised to look carefully again at all options before legislating, the Times reports.Lloyds Banking Group chief executive António Horta-Osório has reassembled his original executive team from Santander UK with the appointment of the Spanish lender's head of British retail banking. Alison Brittain is set to join Mr Horta-Osório's, her former boss at Santander, after being hired to replace Helen Weir, who left the lender earlier this month, as head of retail banking. Ms Brittain's appointment marks the reunification of Mr Horta-Osório's four longest-serving colleagues from Santander UK, which was formed out of the acquisitions of Abbey National, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley, the Telegraph reports.Senior managers and directors of Ireland's main banks implicated in the near-collapse of the country's financial system could be fired under new rules being considered by the Irish central bank. In a move designed to re-establish Ireland's credibility as a financial centre, a new "fit and proper regime" is being brought in that will allow the authorities to remove bank executives deemed to have been involved in the failure or near-failure of several major Irish lenders, the Telegraph reports.Soaring food inflation is the result of "immoral" policies in the US which divert crops for use in the production of biofuels instead of food, according to the chairman of one of the world's largest food companies. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the chairman of Nestlé, lashed out at the Obama administration for promoting the use of ethanol made from corn, at the expense of hundreds of millions of people struggling to afford everyday basics made from the crop, the Independent reports.Apple is suing Amazon in an attempt to prevent the online retailer from using the term 'App Store'. In the suit, filed in a Californian court, Apple says it has contacted Amazon three times over its use of the term and not received a "substantive response." Apple is seeking damages from Amazon and a ruling that prevents the company using App Store. Apple has already won approval to have 'App store' registered as a trademark in the US, the lawsuit says, the Telegraph reports.