Thursday newspaper round-up: BP, Aviva, Rok

BP may abandon plans to drill for oil in deep water off the Shetland Islands amid continuing criticism of the company over its safety practices, Tony Hayward revealed last night. In one of his final public appearances as chief executive of the oil producer, Mr Hayward told the Commons Energy Select Committee that BP had "not made a final decision" on whether to proceed with the drilling of its North Uist prospect, writes the Times. Lying 60 miles off Shetland, it would be one of the deepest wells drilled in UK waters. Aviva has begun the search for a new chairman to replace Lord Sharman, opening up a further vacancy at the top of corporate Britain, The Times has learnt. Britain's second-largest insurer has appointed several headhunters to draw up a list of potential replacements for Lord Sharman, 67, who has held the role for almost five years.Rok is paving the way for refinancing discussions with its lenders, just over a month after the building and maintenance group issued its second profit warning of the year. A company spokesman told the Financial Times that its existing facilities were adequate and it was not at risk of breaching its covenants, and that the move to renegotiate its debt was an indication that it was confident of meeting market expectations of profits for the year to December 31.The chairman of the Treasury Select Committee has launched a scathing attack on HM Revenue & Customs over its handling of the tax fiasco that has left millions facing claims for backdated tax. Andrew Tyrie told The Times that HMRC had failed to prepare itself to deal with taxpayer concerns after it emerged that millions of taxpayers had unwittingly paid the wrong amount of tax under the beleaguered Pay-As-You-Earn scheme. "HMRC appear to have done remarkably little forward planning, bearing in mind that it must have know that this ... bombshell was coming," Mr Tyrie said.René Obermann, Deutsche Telekom's chief executive, is one of eight people German authorities have under investigation over allegations that its Balkan units paid bribes, according to the FT. Manfred Balz, Deutsche Telekom's board member for legal affairs and compliance, said prosecutors in the company's hometown of Bonn claim that in 2005 Mr Obermann linked his approval of dividend payments in Macedonia to a shelving of telecoms deregulation thereThe World Trade Organisation has ruled that Boeing received billions of dollars in subsidies for its commercial aircraft from the United States Government. The judgment comes six years after the European Union first complained about alleged state aid given to the American company. The EU had claimed that Boeing received about $20 billion in cross-subsidies from the Pentagon and Nasa and a further $4 billion from Washington State, writes the Times.The Ministry of Defence's biggest ever private finance initiative (PFI) is "inappropriate" and not proving value for taxpayers' money, according MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). The £10.5bn, 27-year Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft (FSTA) programme - which is to supply air-to-air refuelling and passenger transport planes - is just the latest of a string of PFI deals to attract criticism, writes the Independent.The Office of Fair Trading has begun an investigation into several European vehicle manufacturers, including Daimler of Germany and Scania of Sweden, on suspicion of running a price-fixing cartel, the agency said last night. Investigators from the OFT this week raided the Mercedes-Benz offices of Daimler in the UK and have requested information from Scania of Sweden and MAN in Germany in a wide-ranging inquiry concerning the alleged price fixing of trucks, the Times reports. Britain is no longer home to any of the world's leading brands, according to the influential Best Global Brands index which was published last night. The survey, compiled annually by Interbrand, concluded that no UK company figured in the top 30, indicating that Britain's businesses are falling behind those from Germany and France, the Independent reports. Britain had six brands in the top 100, but propped up the bottom of that list. HSBC was the highest rated, at 32, Barclays reached 74 and Shell 81.