Monday newspaper round-up: Japan, Bahrain, Tullett Prebon...

An explosion rocked Japan's earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Monday, escalating the emergency at the 40-year-old facility north of Tokyo.The blast, captured by television cameras, appeared to have occurred at the plant's No. 3 reactor building, where combustible hydrogen had been building up due to the venting of gas from inside the reactor. Tokyo Electric Power, the plant's operator, said the reactor's protective containment shell remained intact after the blast. A similar explosion destroyed part of the plant's No. 1 reactor building on Saturday, the FT reports.Lloyd's of London insurers are set to be among the worst hit on the stock market today in response to Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami. Estimates of the eventual cost to the insurance industry of the disaster more than doubled to $35bn (£19bn) over the weekend, with the total economic impact from the disaster thought to be $150bn. Shares in London's prominent specialist insurers, such as Catlin, Hardy, Amlin and Hiscox, are expected to come under pressure this morning, the Times reports.The Bank of Japan is ready to step in and stabilise the country's financial markets with an injection of up to Y3 trillion (£22.8bn) into the banking system today, as a senior government official admitted the economic impact of the disaster could be "considerable". Central bank governor Masaaki Shirakawa said after a cabinet meeting yesterday: "We will monitor market conditions and plan to provide markets with a lot of liquidity first thing tomorrow morning." Over the weekend it extended Y55bn to banks in areas hit by the earthquake, writes the Independent. Bahrain has called on neighbouring Gulf states for policing help after anti-government protesters routed riot police in a pitched battle that covered parts of the capital in teargas. People familiar with the matter say the kingdom's Sunni al-Khalifa royal family had asked the five other states in the Gulf Co-operation Council alliance for help with policing, the FT reports.Inter-dealer broker Tullett Prebon has held talks to buy its Swiss-based rival Compagnie Financière Tradition for up to £500m. The Swiss group has been on the market since appointing Morgan Stanley to advise it on strategic options. Patrick Combes, chairman of Compagnie Financière Tradition, was in formal negotiations with London-based Tullett Prebon until last weekend. However, talks stalled over price, the Telegraph reports.Britain's fragile economic recovery could be put at risk by a premature interest-rate rise from the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), a leading business adviser says today. BDO, the accountancy firm, said its research suggests that economic growth in the UK will remain weak during the first half of the year, with its clients gloomy about their trading prospects in the months ahead, the Independent reports.Many retailers and Apple stores ran out of the computer company's second-generation iPad tablet within hours of its first availability, suggesting that initial sales could well surpass those of the first version. Queues at Apple stores in New York, San Francisco and elsewhere wrapped around city blocks, with some people waiting for hours only to find that iPad 2 supplies were gone or limited to the more expensive models with wireless service from carriers AT&T or Verizon, the FT reports.The availability of finance for small companies is improving, but at an increasingly prohibitive cost, according to a survey to be published this morning by the EEF manufacturers' organisation. The findings question the effectiveness of the Government's "Project Merlin" agreement with the banks designed to unlock lending and smooth public anger over bonuses, the EEF says, the Independent reports.The Russian billionaires who own the TNK-BP joint venture with BP yesterday accused the British company of being "unconstructive and unreasonable", in an escalating war of words between the two sides. Stan Polovets, chief executive of the group, known as Alfa-Access-Renova (AAR), launched an attack against BP after the two sides reached stalemate at a board meeting on Saturday in Paris over BP's proposed share swap and Arctic development partnership with the Russian company Rosneft, the Times reports.The chief executive of Kesa Electricals, the parent company of Comet, is the most overpaid boss in the FTSE 250, investors have been told. Thierry Falque-Pierrotin made £352,000 more last year than he should have, based on the company's market value and turnover, according to a report by Inbucon, the influential pay specialist. Also overpaid, research from its Meis database suggested, were Martin Morgan, chief executive of Daily Mail & General Trust, who took home £325,000 more than analysis suggested was justified, and Tony Buckingham, the chief executive of Heritage Oil, who was overpaid by £315,000, the Times reports.Investors are increasingly worried about inflation overshooting the Bank of England's target, according to the Bank for International Settlements. The Switzerland-based body said that financial markets were more concerned now about inflation in Britain than in the US or the euro area. "Although a non-trivial part of this increase was due to the recent VAT hike, the heightened near-term uncertainty may suggest investor wariness of a persistent overshoot of the 2% CPI inflation target," the BIS said in its quarterly report, the Times reports.