Sunday newspaper round-up: FTT, GDP, Vodafone

The Chancellor has launched legal action to block the European Union-wide levy on financial transactions (FTT) which traders fear could have a devastating impact on the City. More specifically, Osborne is worried by the fact that the levy will apply even to those countries who opt out of the agreement. Great Britain already has two other claims outstanding against the EU for setting financial rules which allegedly handicap the City, the FT writes. Further pressure has been brought to bear on the Chancellor after the IMF's Deputy Managing Director joined the lender's Chief Economist - Olivier Blanchard's - calls to slow the pace of fiscal consolidation in the UK. Until now George Osborne had rebuffed that pretence, labelling it as "just one voice." In a similar vein, some much publicised new research shows that - contrary to previous studies - it is not true that countries with debts of more than 90% of GDP grow more slowly. Yet just last Friday ratings agency Fitch seemingly rejected the IMF's stance, arguing that the UK has no fiscal room to absorb any new economic or financial shocks," The Sunday Telegraph says. If Vodafone decides to go ahead with a proposed sale of its 45% stake in Verizon Wireless then several top investors think they should receive the lion's share of the proceeds, roughly three quarters of the same, The Sunday Times reports. That is expected to sharpen the debate in the group's boardroom and comes after Verizon Communications declared itself "extremely confident" that such an operation would incur in a large capital gains tax, thus heaping even greater pressure on Vodafone to act. At least one 'big investor' believes that Vodafone should employ the remainder of the funds to reduce 'gearing' and to undertake acquisitions. ENRC Chairman Mehmet Dalman is still of a mind to quit over what he terms "issues of principle" - as regards his concerns over how the company is being run. That is despite news that the company may be taken private by its founder, Alexander Machkevitch, and his two fellow co-founders. Machkevitch has hired Societe Generale to work on the bid. However, while the offer is close to being funded it is likely that it could be at a price well below Friday's closing level. Valuing a bid will be difficult given that the consortium owns a majority stake, The Sunday Telegraph explains. New York-listed Ameriprise Financial is lining up an £800m bid for the fund management arm of Lloyds Banking Group and is the leading candidate to pull off the operation. The transaction would see the US outfit, which already owns Threadneedle Investments, make away with the unit. The Scottish Widows life assurance business is not for sale, according to sources, only the fund management arm. Nevertheless, Lloyds believes that it could get a better deal by selling the contracts to run them to a third party, according to The Sunday Times.Government plans for a partial privatisation of its weapons procurement arm, Bristol-based DE&S, are unworkable. In the first place, experts say that it would pose a threat to crucial bilateral weapons programmes. Secondly, if more than 95% of the procurement budget is already sunk into existing contracts there is not a lot of headroom to make profits," says think tank Rusi, according to The Sunday Express. There is a 50% chance that the preliminary estimate for UK economic growth in the first quarter, next Thursday, will show that gross domestic product shrank again, experts say. Following the previous quarter's contraction that would mean the British economy is in the midst of its first 'triple-dip' recession, which in turn would put severe pressure on the Chancellor. Even so, that may be the result - to no small degree - of the very cold weather having weighed on construction output, The Sunday Express says. Newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror's pension deficit has ballooned to almost £300m, versus the firm's own market capitalisation of £238m. That comes, in part, after the firm decided last year to reduce its contributions over the next three years to concentrate on paying down debt. The company said that it would "continue to seek opportunities to de-risk our pension schemes, without a material increase in funding obligations," according to The Sunday Times. The Shadow Energy Secretary Caroline Flint has written to Tim Yeo, the Chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Committee, to warn that accounting methods could be obscuring how much energy groups earn from UK households, making it harder for Ofgem to regulate pricing. The concerns were raised in a letter seen by The Financial Mail on Sunday and follow revelations last week that many of the big six energy firms RWE npower, ScottishPower, SSE, Eon, Centrica and EDF pay little or no tax in Britain, the same newspaper says. US clothing giant Gap is looking to bring its new luxury boutique chain to the UK. Intermix - whose biggest fan is the reality TV star Kim Kardashian - was bought by Gap in January for $130m (£85m). It has around 30 shops in the US and Canada and sells upmarket brands such as Yves Saint Laurent and Rag & Bone, The Independent on Sunday says. AB