Thursday newspaper round-up: Google, Ukraine, Insurers

Google is amassing an overseas war chest to help it to make foreign purchases worth up to 30bn dollars. Or, at least, that is what it has told regulators. In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the internet giant defended its decision to hoard so much cash overseas, out of the reach of the United States taxman, by saying that it needed to keep 20bn dollars to 30bn dollars of its earnings offshore "for more foreign acquisitions". This was necessary, it added, because "our global business has expanded into other product offerings like mobile devices, where our competitors and business partners are no longer primarily US-based multinationals." - The TimesFor the first time in more than two decades of Ukrainian independence, Konstantin Kaliberda doubts he will be opening his local School No. 17 for a coming election, despite the crucial role Sunday's presidential vote is meant to play in holding the country together. "We've received no instructions and had no meetings. Normally, we'd have the voter lists by now, but the people at the district election commission are scared and not doing anything," said Mr. Kaliberda, a 47-year-old election official who says he has overseen 10 ballots in the town of Khanzhonkove, near the eastern regional capital of Donetsk. - The Wall Street Journal EuropeThe governor of the Bank of England warns insurers today that he will hold their top executives to account in the same way that he has cracked down on Britain's errant bankers. Writing exclusively for The Times, Mark Carney makes it clear that "integrity, honesty and skill" in senior managers are not optional, whether they are in charge of insurers, investment banks or building societies. In comments that put the entire industry on alert, Mr Carney says that the Bank, which is in charge of supervising insurers, wants the figures at the top of companies to be held accountable if things go wrong and policyholders lose out. - The TimesAuction site eBay has urged users to change their passwords after suffering what may have been the biggest-ever cyber-attack when hackers broke into a database holding its 233m customers' personal data. EBay said the breach, which was detected two weeks ago, had not given the hackers access to customers' financial information. But it did affect a database holding encrypted passwords as well as customer names, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth which were not encrypted. - The GuardianBP is taking its battle over "absurd" compensation payments to alleged victims of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster to America's Supreme Court. The British oil major said on Wednesday that it would ask the United States' highest court to revise a catch-all compensation deal it struck in 2012, which is being used to award payouts to people "with no apparent connection to the Deepwater Horizon spill". Earlier this week, BP lost an appeal in a lower court in New Orleans, to overturn the controversial deal. - The Daily TelegraphLloyds is to close a call centre in Cheshire as part of a plan to cut 645 jobs nationwide as its customers go online rather than phone their bank. The bank said that it was moving 120 jobs from Warrington to a call centre in Speke, Liverpool, where it will create 65 posts but said that the large number of layoffs was necessary because customers were using the phone less. "Telephone banking call volumes are falling as digital banking usage continues to grow, and we are refocusing the business to reflect these changes in our customers' habits," the bank said. - The Times AB