Sunday newspaper round-up: Bank funding, North Sea oil tax, HSBC, Anglo

(ShareCast News) - The European Central Bank and its London counterpart have held talks after the Bank of England raised the alarm over the potential threat of a funding crisis in the banking sector. Three senior London bankers have told the Sunday Times that their normal efforts to raise money from long-term bonds have effectively been blocked in the past fortnight as institutional investors demanded impossibly high interest rates due to fears about the sector and beyond.HSBC directors are meeting over the weekend to finally decide whether to keep the bank's headquarters in London or move to Hong Kong. Regardless, HSBC is withdrawing fastest of all the big banks from the UK's high streets, with 28 branches closed so far in 2016, the Mail on Sunday revealed, and customers at 52 other, mostly rural, branches told that their banks will shut in 12 weeks' time.The banking sector and wider global economy is in a worse position than it was in 2008 due to the explosion in levels of government, corporate and household debt, warned William White, former Bank of England economist and adviser to the Bank of International Settlements. The Mail on Sunday reported that the OECD adviser has warned that the world is now facing a crunch that could see a property crash, another worldwide banking crisis and continued low commodity prices.Royal Bank of Scotland's business arm could cut 400 jobs in local branches and call centres in an overhaul of the market-leading division. The bank told the Mail on Sunday it was making changes "to provide a simpler, more efficient, more customer-focused service based on the changing way our customers want to interact with us".The Treasury has held talks with North Sea oil companies as it considers further, major tax cuts to help the industry cope with the oil price slump. The Sunday Times said the failure of the industry, which employs more than 350,000, was a concern and proposed measures being examined included significant cuts to the rates for old fields and new developments to 30%.Seadrill, the London-based and Oslo- and NYSE-listed company that is one of the main suppliers of oil rigs to Shell, BP, Exxon and other majors, has racked up to much debt and its fate is key to the oil industry's fortunes, the Sunday Telegraph warned. With oil producers racing to cut costs and shelving many projects, demand for drilling rigs has plummeted just as supply of new rigs floods the market, triggering a collapse in rates and leaving Seadrill struggling to service its debt.With the board at Anglo American criticised by major shareholders for his lack of aggression in his strategy so far, chief executive Mark Cutifani could be about to unveil a medical restructuring at is results on Tuesday. Cutifani will reveal plans to break up the company by selling or closing its iron ore and coal mines and shedding two-thirds of staff, the Sunday Times reported, leaving a focus on just diamonds, platinum and copper.George Osborne's looming increases to stamp duty on buy-to-let property could cost jobs and put a brake on UK economic growth, the Commons Treasury select committee has warned. The parliamentary committee has said the the Chancellor's measures was likely to result in a reduction in the supply of privately rented homes and push up rents, the Sunday Telegraph reported.Acquisitive retailers are being put on alert by reports that Guy Hands' Terra Firma has spoken to various advisers about selling Wyevale Garden Centres business via auction. The private equity group hopes to £700m for the company it snapped up for £276m in 2012, the Sunday Times said.Similarly, Rutland Partners, the owners of Pizza Hut's 350 UK restaurants, has appointed PwC as advisers as it looks to sell the franchise for £150m. The profitable business, whose delivery service is owned by Yum, is likely to be gobbled up by private equity firms, the Sunday Times said.The consortium of Balfour Beatty, Skanska and Atkins that won the 30-year contract to widen London's M25 motorway ring road, has been forced to refinance its £1.3bn debts and could put the PFI contract up for sale. The group had to accept onerous terms on the bumper loan needed to fund the M25 upgrade, the Sunday Times reported.Defence giant BAE Systems is poised to announce oil industry specialist Charles Woodburn as its new chief operating officer, as current boss Ian King prepares to step down in the coming year or two. The Cambridge engineering graduate, who left Schlumberger to become chief executive of UK oil services group Expro, is being primed to take over the top role, various newspaper reported.FXPro, the currency trading broker, has decided to pull its London flotation due to the recent market chaos. The Cyprus-based company, which had not yet announced its initial public offer, is still mulling a listing later in the year, the Sunday Telegraph said.Oxford Nanopore Technologies, the gene-sequencing group backed by university spin-out speciaist IP Group, has begun working on a £1bn London flotation for later this year. Eschewing the path of other British science and technology developers that have chosen New York's Nasdaq, the company will soon appoint bankers and is eyeing a date in towards the end of the year, the Sunday Times said.British universities, which have traditionally looked to take stakes of around 50% in companies that are spun out from its research, have been told by an expert from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to take the smaller 10% or 5% stakes that US colleges offer. This is holding back biotech science from being translated into medicines and treatments, the Sunday Times said, and now academics want better terms.Tesco has been issued with a writ by property developer High Peak Developments over claims the grocer group is in breach of competition law by trying to prevent rival retailers from building stores near one of its supermarkets. In a British legal first, the developer claimed Tesco is acting illegally by refusing to release a restrictive covenant on land surrounding a Tesco store at Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire.