Sunday newspaper round-up: Vodafone, Serco, Glencore

Vodafone is considering a £6bn takeover of Africa's Maroc Telecom after agreeing to sell its stake in Verizon Wireless, the Mail on Sunday reported. The phone company is also mulling a move for France's SFR using the war chest it will have after returning cash from the Verizon deal to shareholders. Vodafone sold its 44% stake in SFR to Vivendi two years ago but the business has struggled to compete in a price war.Serco could be ousted from a bid to run a £15bn defence procurement agency, the Sunday Times reported. The outsourcer is part of a consortium, led by US consultancy CH2M Hill, seeking to run Defence, Equipment & Support (DE&S), which buys fighter jets, tanks and warships for the Ministry of Defence. But Serco is the subject of two government probes into claims it overcharged the Ministry of Justice. Defence Minister Philip Dunne told the House of Commons that the consortium should decide whether Serco was an appropriate partner. The paper said Dunne's comment indicated CH2M Hill should consider ditching Serco.Glencore is set to tell investors that cost savings from its merger with Xstrata will be twice those predicted, the Sunday Times said. The estimate will be revealed at an investor day on September 10th. It will be the first presentation for shareholders merger completed four months ago. Then, Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg said he expected $500m of cost savings. The figure will increase to at least $1bn this week as Glasenberg also sets out plans on spending, asset sales and trading.Fears about a housing market bubble pumped up by the Government's Help to Buy scheme are "hype", Paul Fisher, a Bank of England (BoE) rate setter, told the Sunday Times. He said that as the housing market picked up, supply would increase. "Media hype" about a bubble was focused on London hotspots with their own conditions, he said. Fisher, BoE Executive Director for Markets, also said the BoE's forward guidance was meant to boost business and household confidence and not to influence financial markets. "The early reactions we have been getting from business people suggest they are getting the message," he said.Lloyds Banking Group Chief Executive Antonio Horta-Osorio has defended the bank's return to 95% mortgages, the Mail on Sunday reported. "We are comfortable - depending on the customer. We look at customers not at products," he said. He also rejected suggestions that the Government's Help to Buy scheme was driving another house price bubble. "I think, given that this market anomaly is just a temporary problem, it makes sense to have a temporary scheme," the paper reported him as saying. "Nobody wants a housing bubble, but it's premature [to say we have got one] when house prices are below the level they were at in 2006."Consumers spent more in last month's hot weather as people went on days out to the seaside and stayed in the UK for weekends, the Mail on Sunday reported, citing data from Barclaycard. Spending in August rose 4.4% from a year earlier in the fifth straight month that spending rose when inflation was taken into account. Spending in restaurants increased 13.3%, and it rose 8.1% at cinemas and theatres while hotels had a nearly 6.7%.An independent probe into the settlement programme for claims linked to BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill has found "pervasive" improper conduct, the Sunday Telegraph and other papers said. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh's investigation found that senior employees of the claims administrator, Patrick Juneau, plotted to "corrupt" the programme. But it decided that the misbehaviour was not bad enough to shut down payments to claimants from the 2010 spill. It cleared Juneau of any conflict or unethical and improper conduct. BP said the report confirmed the "fraud and unethical conduct" it had suspected. Property website Zoopla is considering a flotation as the City embarks on a flotation frenzy, the Sunday Times said. Zoopla's IPO could value the company at more than £1bn and up to £40bn of further floats are in the pipeline as economic confidence picks up and equity markets soar. Furniture chain DFS, Foxtons, the estate agent, and Merlin Entertainment are mulling share sales with a dozen more eyeing floats in 2014. The paper's business editor, Dominic O'Connell, said retail investors should be wary about the flotation flood but predicted they would line up for Zoopla shares.Merlin Entertainments is planning to offer more than 10% of its shares to retail investors as the owner of Madam Tussauds wax museum prepares for a stock market listing before Christmas, the Sunday Telegraph said. Merlin wants to capitalise on the high recognition for its brands with the public. Merlin's plans for an IPO before Christmas could be made difficult if the Government begins Royal Mail's flotation around the same time. Private-equity backed Merlin is watching the Royal Mail float and is also keeping an eye on the situation in Syria, where Western intervention could shake equity markets, the paper said.