Thursday newspaper round-up: BP, Virgin Atlantic, Flybe

The United States Government filed a civil lawsuit last night against BP and eight other companies implicated in the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that killed 11 workers and led to America's worst oil spill. The lawsuit would leave the British oil company liable for significant fines under the Clean Water Act as well as facing unlimited costs and damages caused by the spill, which would include damages to natural resources as well as economic repercussions, reports the Times.Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic has received several enquiries about potential tie-ups with rival carriers, spanning everything from joint marketing agreements to the possible purchase of a stake. The airline, which is valued by analysts at anywhere between £500m and £1bn, is assessing its market position in the wake of British Airways' £5.8bn merger with Iberia and their transatlantic pact with American Airlines - a deal the Virgin founder bitterly opposed, reports the Telegraph.The man who broke the Bank of England during John Major's sterling crisis nearly two decades ago has emerged as a significant shareholder in Flybe. In the first regulatory investor filings after the £66 million fundraising float by the regional airline, it emerged that George Soros's Quantum Partners has spent more than £7.2 million taking a 3.4 per cent stake in the carrier, the Times writes.Britain's richest charity and one of its most successful investors gave warning yesterday that the country is facing its biggest inflationary threat for 20 years and disclosed that it had abandoned bond investment as a consequence. Wellcome Trust, which has amassed a £14.5bn investment fortune, said that it had sold its last bond in April as it positioned itself for a rise in inflation, says the Times.The row over the €40m (£34m) Allied Irish Banks bonuses deepened today after extraordinary claims that executives of the bank had tried to rush the payments through as the bailout loomed.Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole says a source at AIB told him the bonuses were "a looting of the bank by management before the government became involved in the institution," the Guardian reports.George Osborne, the Chancellor, said Britain's bilateral emergency loan to Ireland will not add to Britain's deficit, and will earn £440m for the public coffers. Britain has offered Ireland a loan of £3.25bn as part of its £7bn contribution to an international bailout for the struggling eurozone country, the Telegraph reports. Twitter's latest fundraising has valued the company at $3.7bn, up sharply from the $1bn that the microblogging service was worth a year ago and the latest sign of the sky-high prices private investors are prepared to pay for fast-growing internet companies. The deal also adds one of Silicon Valley's most powerful financiers to Twitter's growing army of backers, with John Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins partner who was also an early promoter of Amazon and Google, leading the capital-raising round, the FT reports.Heinz said it was "disappointed" with the decision by nearly 1,200 workers to hold a 24-hour strike from last night. The Unite trade union said staff would stop production at the food giant's plant near Wigan over the "lousy pay deal on offer from the vastly profitable company". It claimed that the walkout would mean two million fewer cans of Heinz baked beans and soups would be produced, according to the Independent. The City of London yesterday sought to put a more positive sheen on its somewhat tarnished reputation, arguing that Britain's financial services industry last year accounted for more than £1 of every £10 raised by the Treasury in tax. The City of London Corporation, which provides the square mile's local government as well as acting as its cheerleader in chief, said financial services had contributed £53.4bn in the 2009-10 financial year - 11.2 per cent of the total tax take, the Independent reports.