Sunday newspaper round-up: HMRC's new tax deals, Tesco's debt, Sainsbury's

(ShareCast News) - In the wake of Google's £130m tax settlement with the UK taxman, other giant US corporations are close to shaking hands on their own deals. HM Revenue & Customs officials have confirmed to the Sunday Times that Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and McDonald's are all close to agreements that would swell the national coffers but are likely to land the office in hot water after Google was felt to have got of lightly.Ahead of looming lending deadlines, Tesco has begun working on restructuring £1.4bn of its £17.5bn debt mountain. The grocer aims to repay £1.4bn in the next few months, the Sunday Telegraph said, as the risk of default on its borrowings climbed to the highest on record.With its own deadline of 2 February, Sainsbury's is under pressure from major investors to up its bid for Argos owner Home Retail but not over-pay for the deal. With Home Retail shareholders wanting around 220p a share, Sainsbury's management have been frustrated in their efforts to drum up support from their own backers due to wildly different views on valuation, according to sources cited by the Sunday Telegraph.Meanwhile, some of the pressure has dissipated in Shell's £36bn takeover of BG Group after news that a Brazil no longer plans to hike taxes on the oil sector. Fear of such a hike had led some institutional investors to plan to vote against the deal this Thursday, the Mail on Sunday reported.Activist investor Och-Ziff Capital has taken a stake in GlaxoSmithKline and is understood to have been adding to the heat on the drug group to replace chief executive Andrew Witty. The Sunday Times reported that the Manhattan firm's London arm has spoken to GS chairman Sir Philip Hampton, adding to pressure on Witty and finance director Simon Dingemans.The current state of high street banking IT systems is not up to scratch and the chief executives of Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Barclays, as well as the heads of the Bank of England's regulatory arms, have been told to urgently begin addressing the matter from board level downwards. MP Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Commons' Treasury Committee, said Andrew Bailey, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England and chief executive the bank's Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) should lead official efforts to enforce banks to bring their computer systems up to scratch, the Sunday Times reported.Standard Chartered has found it difficult to find a suitable person to replace Sir John Peace as chairman. Major shareholders, cited by the Sunday Times, admitted the "modest salary" was a problem as "very few people who would take on the risk of being the chairman of a bank these days", heightened by regulations intended to make executives more accountable for scandals.Deutsche Bank may need to raise cash through a bond sale, or sale of its Postbank subsidiary, after analysts identified a €7bn capital hole in its accounts that will need to be filled by the end of next year. The lender's new chief executive, John Cryan, is looking to conserve cash by stopping the bank's dividend for the next two years, the Sunday Times said.Elsewhere in the banking sector, a pair of banks from Iran are in talks with UK regulators about reopening their doors to British businesses after lifting of sanctions against the Middle Eastern country, the Sunday Times revealed. Melli Bank and Persia International Bank have been given their license back by the Bank of England, while international banks around the world are preparing to re-establish links with Iranian counterparts using the Swift payments system.Profit warnings have soared to a post-crisis peak, according to figures compiled by Ernst & Young cited by the Sunday Telegraph. Data showed UK-listed companies have issued 313 downgrades over the past year, the most since 2008.Online grocer Ocado has attracted even more interest from short-selling hedge funds. Now the second most shorted company in the FTSE 350, Ocado's share price tumble was arrested by rumours of a takeover bid from online giant Amazon, but this has only served to dramatically increase short interest in the last week, said the Mail on Sunday.Imagination Technologies is poised to begin a major restructuring, including radical cost-cutting and the sale of its Pure digital radio arm. After a round of crisis talks with top institutional shareholders, chairman Bert Nordberg revealed plans to dispose of loss-making divisions as well as the possible sale of its corporate headquarters, the Sunday Times reported.Metro Bank will join its fellow UK challenger banks on the public markets with a £2bn initial public offer that flies in the face of the month's stock market turmoil. Metro, which in 2010 became the first new bank to launch in Britain for more than 100 years, has drawn up plans with its advisers to float £300m of its shares, the Mail on Sunday said, with a formal intention-to-float document expected this week.Mountain Warehouse could join it with its own £200m flotation, according to the Sunday Times. The retailer, which would be the first to IPO in London for almost a year, has appointed Rothschild to examine the move.Watkins Jones, the Welsh building and property management firm, has also begun working on a flotation with advisers at Zeus Capital. The company, which has an impressive client list and specialises in building student halls of residence, could be worth up to £300m, the Sunday Times said.