Thursday newspaper round-up: HSBC, Vince Cable, Luminar

HSBC will try to get its chosen candidate for the bank's next executive chairman signed off by the Financial Services Authority tomorrow before a final decision at a board meeting next Tuesday, says the Times. The bank is scrambling to resolve the situation after an extraordinary period of internal disorder in which Michael Geoghegan, the chief executive, has been pitted against John Thornton, a former Goldman Sachs banker who is chairman of HSBC's North American division, for the role.Paul Marshall, the hedge fund manager and high profile Liberal Democrat, has urged Vince Cable to stop "populist" bank bashing and focus instead on defending the City against onerous and damaging regulations. The founder of Marshall Wace Asset Management, who is also one of the Lib Dems biggest donors, warned that Mr Cable is behaving like a "minister who wants to make his mark" rather than doing what was "important for the country", says the Telegraph.Britain's biggest nightclub operator will allay fears over its future today by quashing speculation that it may have breached its banking covenants, The Times has learnt. In a trading update ahead of its interim results, Luminar, operator of the Oceana and Liquid chains, is expected to confirm that it remains within requirements after passing a scheduled covenant test at the end of August.Lehman Brothers could emerge from bankruptcy early next year, having returned more money than expected to its creditors, the Wall Street Bank's liquidator said yesterday. In a statement to the US Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, Lehman Brothers Holdings, the bankruptcy estate of what was once one of America's top investment banks, said that it was optimistic that its reorganisation plan would be ready for the court's confirmation in early 2011, the Times reports. Britain is to wind the clock back 30 years to an era of credit controls in an effort to stamp out speculative bubbles and protect consumers from crippling levels of debt. Regulators will have the power to cap mortgages, limit credit to real estate investors, and force banks to restrict lending. Outlining the plans, Financial Services Authority chairman Lord Turner of Ecchinswell called for a "mature public debate" on the issue, acknowledging that the measures, which "may include maximum loan-to-value ratios", would be "unpopular", the Telegraph reports.Blockbuster, the DVD rental chain with 5,800 stores around the world, is expected to file for bankruptcy, marking another convulsion from the shift to online entertainment. The company has $900m (£575m) of debt that it cannot pay because its revenues are tumbling and it is sliding further into the red, and a financial restructuring deal will wipe out shareholders and all but the most senior bondholders, the Independent says.Falling corporate bond yields and volatile equity markets are likely to cause a headache for companies that offer their staff defined-benefit pension schemes, research published yesterday shows. The consultancy group Mercer said that defined-benefit, or final-salary, plans in most developed economies have seen a marked increase in liabilities, resulting in companies facing larger deficits on their balance sheets, the Independent reports.Germany's biggest container shipping line is to cancel a state guarantee for its borrowing and pay back a series of loans to its biggest shareholder in a move that could pave the way for its eventual sale. Hapag-Lloyd's move is the latest sign of the normalisation of container shipping after 2009 brought a series of lines close to collapse and seeking support from either governments or wealthy shareholders, the FT reports.