Sunday newspaper round-up: ENRC, Severn Trent, Enterprise Inns

The largest investor in ENRC has fallen in behind a 3.3bn pound takeover bid for the beleaguered FTSE 100 miner, all but ensuring its success despite protests from independent directors. Kazakhmys, a rival resources group with operations in Kazakhstan, has signalled privately that it will vote its 26 per cent stake in favour of the controversial offer tabled by ENRC's three oligarch founders and the Kazakh government, even if the terms are not improved, The Sunday Times reports.A consortium of British and international funds is planning a second bid for Severn Trent before the June 11th "put up or shut up" deadline. The precise terms of the original offer have not been disclosed, but it is expected a revised offer is likely to be in the region of between £20 and £21, valuing it just shy of £5bn. The sources, however, cautioned that any new offer would only be a slight increase as the regulated business is about to enter a price review with Ofwat, The Sunday Telegraph writes.Pub companies have threatened to sue the Government in European courts if it presses ahead with plans to reform the industry. They have warned that plans to force them to loosen their control over pub tenants - known as the beer tie - will destroy jobs and lead to more pub closures. Ted Tuppen, Chief Executive of Britain's biggest pub landlord, Enterprise Inns, said the proposals in a consultation document from the Department for Business 'would be subject to legal challenge' unless the Government backed down from its current stance, The Financial Mail on Sunday says.China's Premier has waded into an intensifying trade dispute with Europe, warning that EU investigations into Chinese-made solar panels and telecommunications equipment would backfire by hurting European consumers. "The cases over these two types of products will hurt Chinese industries, business and jobs and also damage the vital interests of European users and consumers," Li Keqiang said en route to Berlin on Sunday, during his first foreign trip since becoming premier. "We express firm opposition," The Financial Times cites him as having said. Wall Street vulture funds are homing in on a dramatic takeover of the struggling owner of Britain's Yellow Pages. They will seize control of the loss-making phonebook publisher, now called Hibu, in a deal that will wipe out shareholders and more than halve its £2bn-plus debt pile. Under the debt-for-equity deal that is expected to be unveiled within weeks, 300 creditors, which include hedge funds, banks and bondholders, will become the new owners of the former FTSE 100 giant, The Sunday Times says. Britains´s water industry is braced for another foreign raid as overseas investors jostle to buy a stake in the company that supplies 4.7m people in Yorkshire. A clutch of international suitors ? including the fund that manages the oil wealth of Abu Dhabi, and Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street banking giant ? are weighing up bids for a chunk of Kelda, the owner of Yorkshire Water. The investors behind Kelda, which include the infrastructure arms of both Citi, the American bank, and M&G, the British fund manager, have put a 30% stake in the company up for sale. It is worth between £1bn and £1.5bn, according to The Sunday Times.A proposed clampdown on tax avoidance by UK-based hedge funds, private equity firms and other investment management partnerships could raise tax bills by as much $20bn a year, industry figures believe. HM Revenue & Customs last week launched a consultation document designed to tackle the disguising of employment relationships through limited liability partnership structures and the manipulation of profit and loss allocations to achieve tax advantages, The Financial Times reports.The co-founder and former Chairman of Betfair has said that the online betting exchange could consider restructuring its balance sheet in the wake of its rejection of a £985m offer from a consortium led by private equity firm CVC. Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, the former JP Morgan trader said of Betfair: "This business is making a lot of money, has a lot of cash on its balance sheet, and doesn't have any debt. "Potentially, capital structure is, I think, something you might look at" if you were running the business, he continued.BP, Shell and Statoil have been named in a proposed class action lawsuit over alleged oil price rigging, following the launch of a European Commission investigation into the oil giants. Chicago-based commodities trader Prime International Trading named the companies in a suit on Wednesday, accusing them of misreporting trades for the Brent oil benchmark. It is seeking civil damages, arguing that it would have its conducted trades based on the inaccurate prices. The EC is investigating whether the companies colluded to distort the benchmark of oil and other products by reporting distorted prices to agency Platts for more than a decade, according to The Sunday Telegraph.The Co-op Bank is considering using a new type of share issue to boost its capital levels once talks with the regulators are complete. The bank, which was recently downgraded by credit rating agency Moody's amid fears it could not hit the new capital targets, is planning to meet the immediate needs for extra capital by selling its life and general insurance businesses. But it is thought that the mutually owned organisation is also considering issuing a new type of investment called core capital deferred shares, in future. They combine the capital-raising features of ordinary shares, but do not have the same ownership rights, The Financial Mail on Sunday says.Michael O'Leary, the outspoken Ryanair boss who has harboured dreams of owning Aer Lingus, will be told this week to sell around half of the budget airline's stake in Ireland's national flag carrier. Ryanair has long pursued Aer Lingus, and has a 29.8% shareholding, worth about £210m. However, attempts by Mr O'Leary, pictured, have been knocked back three times at European level, most recently in February, while the Competition Commission (CC) is due to issue its initial findings into whether holding such a significant minority stake in a rival distorts the airline market, The Independent on Sunday reports. AB