Wednesday paper round-up: BP, Lloyds Banking, Japan...

BP was subject to an investigation in the North Sea which found new staff were not trained to "basic safety standards" - six months before its Gulf of Mexico accident.The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) began its inquiry after a complaint by a worker on the Clair rig off the Shetlands, near to where BP is about to begin deepwater drilling. The conclusions, sent to BP executives in a letter in October last year, found "training of some new personnel to basic safety standards was ineffective", the Telegraph reports.Irate customers lodged more complaints against Lloyds Banking Group than any other financial institution in Britain during the first half of the year, according to figures released yesterday by an independent watchdog. The part-nationalised banking group was the subject of 22,420 individual complaints for the six months to June 30, the Financial Ombudsman Service said, the Times reports. The Japanese Ministry of Finance today ended weeks of speculation when it ordered the central bank to intervene in currency markets and artificially weaken the yen to protect the country's exporters from crushing commercial damage. The move - the Japanese authorities' first intervention since 2004 -followed another alarming rise for the Japanese currency on Tuesday as the yen ripped through the Y83 level against the US dollar to hit a 15-year high, the Times reports.The new global deal on banks' capital was "disappointing" and did not push financial institutions hard enough to become safer, Lord Myners said yesterday. The former City minister, a key figure in formulating the banking bailout in 2008, said that the rules agreed by the 27-member countries of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision on Sunday did not go far enough. "The requirements are not high enough and the phasing is too long," Lord Myners told the Treasury Select Committee, the Times reports.Public sector workers are paid more on average than those in the private sector, according to the first comprehensive analysis of the pay divide by Britain's national statistician. The Office for National Statistics found that full-time public sector staff earned an average of £74 a week more than those in the private sector. Once employer pension contributions were included, the gap rose to £136, illustrating the generous pay-and-perks deals enjoyed by local and central government workers, the Telegraph reports.A State Council think-tank in China has warned Washington that the US will come off worst in a trade war if it imposes sanctions against Beijing over the two nations' currency spat. Ding Yifan, a policy guru at the Development Research Centre, said China could respond by selling holdings of US debt, estimated at over $1.5trn (£963bn). This would trigger a rise in US interest rates. His comments at a forum in Beijing follow a string of remarks by Chinese officials questioning US credit-worthiness and the reliability of the dollar, the Telegraph reports.Cambridge, university city of ancient colleges, spires and towers, of hidden gardens and river vistas, is betrayed by its high street shops, a new report claims. Their lack of variety, and their domination by big chains, make Cambridge Britain's top "clone town", says the New Economics Foundation, the Independent reports.The battle between Citigroup and Guy Hands' Terra Firma private equity group over the 2007 buyout of EMI will proceed to trial next month, a New York judge ruled on Tuesday. However, Judge Jed Rakoff rejected two of Terra Firma's arguments, alleging negligent misrepresentation and tortious interference, meaning the court will hear just two allegations, of fraudulent misrepresentation and fraudulent concealment, the FT reports.Insurers are facing uncertainty created by sweeping definitions in the Wall Street reform act, which leave open the possibility that their products will be covered by the new swaps regime. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has the power to use the ambiguity of wording in the Dodd-Frank financial reform act to extend its reach to financial products that share some of the characteristics of derivatives, lawyers have said, the FT reports.