Friday newspaper round-up: Gas supplies, Lloyds Banking, Aberdeen Asset

Manufacturers in the north-west and midlands have had their gas supplies cut as freezing temperatures propelled demand to a record high.The cuts came as gas prices spiked on fears of disruption to supplies from Norway, the biggest source of imported gas. Ninety-four companies on interruptible contracts, which provide gas at a cheaper price in return for an agreement that supplies can be cut off if necessary, were told by suppliers they must go without or face financial penalties, the FT reports.Tim Geithner's Federal Reserve Bank of New York urged American International Group (AIG) to remain silent on $105bn (£65bn) of payments made to banks including Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank at the height of the financial crisis. The New York Fed, under Mr Geithner's leadership until he was appointed US Treasury Secretary in January 2009, instructed the troubled insurer to withhold details of the payments from the American public, which bailed out AIG by as much as $182bn at its financial nadir, the Telegraph reports. Foxtons, the estate agent that epitomised the London property bubble with its aggressive selling tactics and fleet of brightly coloured Minis, has been taken over by its lenders following one of the private equity industry's most ill-timed deals. BC Partners, the private equity group that acquired Foxtons from Jon Hunt, its founder, for as much as £360m ($574m) in May 2007, has agreed a refinancing deal that will halve the agent's debt in return for giving its lenders a majority stake, the FT reports.Lloyds Banking Group is facing a loss of at least £200m after Kilmartin, an HBOS-backed property company, went into receivership. Directors of Kilmartin Holdings, a Scottish group founded by Iain Wotherspoon, the property entrepreneur, handed over the company to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the accountant, yesterday, along with Kilmartin Property Group. Annfield Assets, another subsidiary, has gone into administration, the Times reports.National Express, the troubled bus and train operator, launched a £350m corporate bond issue yesterday. The group said that it would use the money to repay €270 m (£242m) of bond debt, which was fast approaching maturity. It will cost the company £17.5 mn to unwind interest rate swaps relating to its existing bonds, but it will have enough spare change from the refinancing to reduce its bank debt to about £270m, the Times reports.Aberdeen Asset Management is expected to announce on Friday that it is paying about £85m ($135m) for nearly half the asset management business of Royal Bank of Scotland, as the troubled lender continues to shrink. Aberdeen, which is expected to fund the acquisition by a share placing, is buying a £13bn portfolio of funds of funds and hedge funds. The move is the latest in a series of deals by Martin Gilbert, Aberdeen's chief executive, who has been aggressively buying up rival asset management businesses during the financial crisis, the FT reports.Online gambling operators based abroad will have to win a government licence in order to take bets from punters and advertise in the UK under tougher measures aimed at curbing problem gambling and match-fixing scandals. The proposed stricter licensing regime announced on Thursday, which requires legislation, highlights the dominance of online gambling in the UK and the difficulty for regulators of tackling an invasion of foreign-based operators, the FT reports.The Bank of England's £200bn quantitative easing (QE) experiment is set to come to an end next month, with the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) yesterday voting to leave the scale of the scheme on hold. The remaining money in the programme will be exhausted by the time of the MPC's February meeting and it is then expected - barring shocks - to take the economy off its life support system, the Independent reports.