Tuesday newspaper round-up: Oil, Barclays, National Express

Oil has hit $120 per barrel for the first time since before the financial crisis - threatening global growth and putting the world at risk of an inflationary shock. Brent crude, the London benchmark, had been trading around $115 per barrel for a fortnight, but the price has crept up over the past couple of days as the military action in Libya shows no sign of easy resolution. It closed at $121.06 - a two-and-a-half year high - on Monday, the Telegraph reports.Bob Diamond has decided Barclays must increase its risk appetite amid internal expectations at the bank that a key measure of its profitability will fall or stay stagnant this year. Barclays' new chief executive is considering increasing the bank's risk profile, in order to hit profitability targets over the next three years, according to people familiar with the bank's thinking, says the Financial Times. A row has broken out at bus and train group National Express after it rebuffed a rebel investor's demand for a shake-up of growth strategy. National Express urged investors to throw out a drive by the activist hedge fund Elliott Advisors to get three of its candidates onto the board as non-executive directors, says the Daily Express.The risk is roughly one in seven that Europe's ongoing debt crisis will push member nations to abandon the shared currency, raising the spectre of the "effective end of the euro area," the Economist Intelligence Unit has warned. Attempts to restore investors' confidence in debt-laden nations' ability to honour their commitments could see the weaker eurozone members grow ever wearier of the demands placed on them, according to a new report from the research body, the Telegraph reports.Easyjet's founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou is to launch a no-frills fitness club chain, easyGym, this summer after the venture secured its first two sites. The entrepreneur's foray into the fitness sector comes after he teamed up with the private equity-backed Fore Fitness last year, reports the Independent.BP remained locked in confrontation with its Russian partners last night as the tribunal tasked with ruling on the oil giant's share-swap plans was forced into a second day. The judges are to decide whether BP's proposed $16bn (£9.9bn) share-swap with state-owned Rosneft violates the shareholder agreement of its Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, according to the Independent.The administrators of struggling off-licence chain Oddbins have been approached by a number of potential buyers. Deloitte reassured the retailer's 400 staff on Monday that they would continue to be paid, and said discussions had been held with "several interested parties" about providing the funding necessary to keep the business afloat. Oddbins has 89 stores and annual sales of £75m, according to the Guardian.RG