Friday newspaper round-up: BP, Prudential, Brit Insurance

A new calculation of the amount of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from the fractured BP oil rig have dramatically increased the estimate, suggesting an amount equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could be pouring into the ocean every eight to 10 days.The fresh estimate from a US government panel is 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil a day - significantly above the previous estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day, the Times reports.David Cameron has refused to bow to City demands to intervene in the increasingly bitter transatlantic row over the BP oil spill, as fears grow for the company's future. In the first test of the "special relationship" since the Coalition took power, the Prime Minister is under growing pressure to try to stop Barack Obama's fierce criticism of the company, the Telegaph reports.Leaders of the world's biggest oil and gas companies have held crisis talks to determine the cause of BP's deadly accident in the Gulf of Mexico, the chairman of Gazprom told The Times. Alexei Miller, who leads the Kremlin-controlled gas export monopoly that supplies almost 20% of Europe's gas supplies, said: "After the accident, of course, the leaders of the top oil and gas companies have been communicating and asking why and how this happened. These are people with a lot of gravitas and authority."The Prudential's leading institutional shareholders have frozen the chief executive out of crunch talks to debate his own future. It emerged last night that despite being in London, Tidjane Thiam has held no formal talks with shareholders this week about the future management of the UK's biggest insurer. Instead, shareholders have specifically called for meetings with the chairman Harvey McGrath and James Ross, the senior independent director, the Times reports.One of Tesco's top 10 executives has announced his resignation just a day after Britain's biggest retail chain anointed Philip Clarke as Sir Terry Leahy's successor. The departure of the highly regarded Colin Holmes is the first prominent defection at Tesco following the retail chain's most radical management restructuring in 13 years. Tesco said on Thursday night that Mr Holmes, its fresh foods commercial director, resigned in April although his departure was only announced internally on Wednesday, a day after Mr Clarke was unveiled as Sir Terry's successor. He was on the retailer's executive committee and had been tipped as a possible contender to the Tesco crown, the FT reports.Brit Insurance - sponsors of the England cricket team - has rejected a £785m offer from US private equity firm Apollo. The company's chairman, John Barton, met with Apollo this week after the private equity firm offered £10 a share for the Lloyds of London insurer - a 30pc premium to last night's closing price of 729p, the Telegraph reports.Sir Stuart Rose, the chairman of Marks & Spencer, signed off his final year leading the retailer with a surge in his pay to £4.3m. His bumper package came after M&S delivered a 5 per cent rise in underlying profits to £633m for the year to 27 March, although this was down sharply from the £1bn delivered in 2007-08. M&S also cut its dividend by 15.7% last year, the Independent reports.British Airways will expand at Madrid rather than Heathrow after its planned Iberia merger if the UK fails to address increased demand now that it has scrapped plans for a third runway at the UK's biggest airport, Willie Walsh warned yesterday. "You've got a fantastic air-port in Madrid that has excess capacity that the Spanish government has invested in, that Madrid's local government has invested in, and we'll grow there," the BA chief executive told the Financial Times in a video interview.Mining shares jumped on Thursday on hopes that Kevin Rudd, Australia's prime minister, was about to announce changes to his proposed mining tax. The measures, announced in May, have hit valuations across the sector hard. Australia's Herald Sun newspaper reported that Mr Rudd will reveal in the next few days "major changes" to the 40% mining super tax. The report said Mr Rudd would raise the level at which the tax is levied from 6% to more than 10% of profits from projects, the Telegraph reprots.Insider dealing is at its worst for six years, figures from the Financial Services Authority suggest, indicating that the regulator's aggressive war on stock market cheats has yet to pay dividends. The tentative evidence of increased market abuse, based on suspicious share trading statistics, came as the lead City regulator revealed that Hector Sants, its outgoing chief executive, last year received a 19 per cent increase in pay to £742,000, the Times reports.