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Oil and gas firms to hire fewer staff as numbers seeking jobs increase: Nearly two thirds of oil and gas companies plan to recruit fewer staff than they did three months ago or have put hiring on hold but more people appear to be looking for jobs in the industry, research has found.

Cairn India takes on country’s government: Cairn Energy’s former subsidiary in India is reported to have launched a legal action against the country’s government as both firms dispute tax claims, writes Mark Williamson.

Oil services company opens Aberdeen well test centre: Peak Well Systems has opened a new gas testing facility in Aberdeen following what it described as significant investment.

Tate & Lyle shares rise on deal talk: Investors in Tate & Lyle enjoyed more good news as markets digested the bid interest in its Splenda sweetener business. The FTSE 100-listed company said last week that pretax profits would come in “modestly below” the £230 million estimate it provided for the market in September. After three profit warnings in the past 12 months, that was enough to send the shares higher. This week has brought more good news for investors as Ajinomoto, the maker of the low-calorie sweetener aspartame, is said to be interested in Tate’s Splenda business. Tate management are currently reviewing their options with Splenda and are due to announce the results of that in late May. The majority of Tate & Lyle sales are focused on the United States, where the bulk ingredients division, which manufactures corn syrup for the drinks industry, generates 70% of group sales and about 45% of profits. The stable profits and the bid interest have seen Tate’s shares gain almost 8% during the past seven days. The shares will always have something of a floor provided by a dividend, which offers a prospective yield of 4.7%, but until the profits start growing again they are a hold. Tate & Lyle at 643p+17p. Questor Says “Hold”.

Savills Chief’s pay jumps by 33% ahead of expansion push: Jeremy Helsby, Chief Executive of the property adviser Savills, has seen his pay jump 33% after launching the biggest expansion programme in the company’s history.

UK BRC shop price index dropped in March The BRC shop price index in the UK slid 2.10% in March on a YoY basis. In the previous month, the BRC shop price index had recorded a drop of 1.70%.

At 0330GMT today, Brent crude oil one month futures contract is trading 1.27% or $0.75 lower at $58.35 per barrel, ahead of the Energy Information Administration weekly oil inventory data scheduled to be released later today. Yesterday, the contract climbed 1.69% or $0.98, to settle at $59.10 per barrel, extending its rally from the previous session. However, gains were kept in check after the American Petroleum Institute reported that US crude oil stockpiles rose 12.2 million barrels last week.

BG Group confirmed speculation on Wednesday by revealing that oil major Royal Dutch Shell has made a cash and share offer valuing the natural gas outfit at £47bn. The offer has been recommended by BG Group's board. "The boards of Shell and BG are pleased to announce that they have reached agreement on the terms of a recommended cash and share offer to be made by Shell for the entire issued and to be issued share capital of BG," the company said in a statement.

April 7 (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell Plc is in talks to buy gas producer BG Group Plc, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. (http://on.wsj.com/1FcKGGY) As of Tuesday's close, BG Group had a market capitalization of about 31 billion pounds ($46 billion). BG Group and Shell were both immediately unavailable for comment outside regular business hours. ($1 = 0.6749 pounds) (Reporting by Narottam Medhora and Sai Sachin in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza

During Q1 2015 a real physical glut of crude oil in the United States has become apparent. The glut is due to US oil, once pumped, remaining in the United States. There is insufficient demand hence a growing unsold global inventory of crude oil possibly 0.5m-1.1m barrels per day. There is diminishing storage facilities to hold and store the crude oil inventory which is still building. There has not been any drop in oil production. It is starting to resemble an EU butter mountain!

The Bank of England is monitoring Britain's record current account deficit as it could trigger a "deterioration in market sentiment" towards the UK if the recovery falters. The Financial Policy Committee (FPC) noted that the UK current account deficit widened to £22.8bn in the third quarter of 2014. This was equal to 6% of UK gross domestic product (GDP) and was high by historical standards. While the gap shrank slightly to £22bn in the fourth quarter, the FPC said: "The Committee agreed to keep their assessment of this risk under close review and would monitor the maturity and liquidity of the financing of the deficit." Minutes of the last FPC meeting on 24 March also showed that risks surrounding Greece had increased and that low growth in the wider Eurozone would "exacerbate financing challenges in highly indebted economies". Greece only accounts for less than 2% of Eurozone GDP, and UK banks had already reduced their exposure to other highly indebted Eurozone nations in recent years. However, the FPC said links to these countries were still large, equal to over 60% of UK banks' aggregate common equity tier-one capital. "Given the above material risks, Bank staff had been working closely with HM Treasury and the FCA to ensure contingency plans were in place," the FPC said. It also highlighted the risk of a further slowdown in China and a possible reversal of capital flows to some emerging markets "as the stance of monetary policy began to diverge globally".

Oil stocks were in demand on Tuesday as traders played catch-up with gains in crude futures over the last few days. During the weekend Saudi Arabia increased its official price for Asian oil buyers, which markets interpreted as a sign of improving demand. The battered shares prices of energy and exploration outfits such as Premier Oil lead the advance, alongside gains in the likes of Hunting and Soco International.

Was the NOMAD half sleep back in October, November 2014 when TEK director duly informed him that another company where he was a NED ; had gone into administration; London Mining plc. Northland is unlikely to become NOMAD of the year anytime soon hey.

UK services purchasing managers’ index for March, which covers businesses from hotels to banks, reached a seven-month high in March. The PMI rose sharply to 58.9 last month from 56.7 in February, according to data firm Markit.

NUMBER CRUNCH 100,000 Labour wants to target somewhere below 0.5 per cent of Britain’s 26.4m homes with the tax, and expects it to hit 100,000 properties. £1.2bn Ed Miliband hopes to raise £1.2bn per year from the tax, with most of that revenue coming from homes worth more than £3m

HOW MUCH WILL IT BRING IN? The next problem is working out exactly how much the tax will raise. Labour wants to bring in £1.2bn from the tax. The party plans to charge those with homes worth £2m to £3m an extra £250 per month, or £3,000 per year. If all the homes were charged £3,000, it would raise £300m – one-quarter of the target. That raises questions as to how much the homes worth above £3m would pay. Labour has not given a firm answer yet, but does say it would be proportionate, so those owners can expect a very large tax charge each year to cover the remaining £900m target. The future of most taxes is certain – they tend to hit more and more people over time. For instance, rising house prices mean the government expects stamp duty revenues to rise from £9.4bn in 2013-14 to £18bn in 2019-20. By contrast, Labour has said it plans to keep the proportion paying the mansion tax steady, by changing the threshold in line with the average price of the homes affected when the charge comes into force. And one glimmer of hope for those who have an expensive house, but not much income, is that Labour will allow them to defer the tax payments until the property is sold, effectively adding it to their newly increased stamp duty bill. DO OTHER OPTIONS EXIST? The Lib Dems also want a mansion tax, targeting the same number of homes and a similar amount of revenue, achieved by adding new council tax bands. A similar alternative has been put forward by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), but one which would avoid any new valuation troubles. By doubling the charges on those in the top bands, G and H, the government – or local councils – could bring in £2bn per year, from the top 4.2 per cent of households. “Introducing a separate ‘mansion tax’ would be unnecessarily complicated when council tax could be brought up to date and refocused on higher-value properties,” the IFS said in a paper written by Stuart Adam and Barra Roantree. “Increasing council tax on high-value properties would certainly hit wealthy households hardest. It would also be progressive across the income distribution, though the losers would also include some who lived in big houses but with low current income and who, for one reason or another, were not protected by means-tested council tax support.” If Ed Miliband is worried that his mansion tax will come up short, this could be a quick and relatively easy way to raise more cash across more of the country – though it would be a touch harder to dismiss the victims as mansion-owners. Miliband’s mansion Ed Miliband would be the only party leader to pay his mansion tax, thanks to his London property benefitting from the price boom NUMBER CRUNCH 100,000 Labour wants to target somewhere below 0.5 per cent of Britain’s 26.4m homes with the tax, and expects it

FACT-FILTER: Separating the spin from the facts Tim Wallace compares the parties’ housing taxes Money is tight in Whitehall. Both Labour and the Con­servatives are promis­ing to cut the deficit to varying degrees if they win the General Election. And Westminster is surrounded by some of the most valuable real estate in the world. House prices in London have boomed since 2013, so an obvious solution presents itself – confiscate some of that wealth. But how best to do it? STAMP DUTY George Osborne hiked stamp duty on expensive homes in his Autumn Statement, while reducing the levy on the cheaper 98 per cent of sales. Under those new rules, a house selling for £275,000 saw its stamp duty bill cut by £4,500 to £3,750, while a property worth £2m saw its bill rise £53,750 to £153,750. Overall, the stamp duty changes represent an annual tax cut of around £800m. TAX HOMES WORTH OVER £2M Labour wants to add an annual levy to the most valuable homes, its mansion tax, rather than changing the transaction tax. There is certainly room to quibble about the definition of a mansion. Dictionaries tend to stick with “a large, impressive house”, while Ed Miliband has set it at homes worth more than £2m. It will result in awkward comparisons. Pokey, one-bedroom flats in Kensington routinely sell for more than £2m, while a sprawling seven-bed pile in an upmarket corner of Northumberland will fit comfortably below the threshold. But it targets the asset-rich, and those in London in particular. WHO IS AFFECTED? One clear problem is how to value those houses. The last nation-wide valuation of homes took place in 1991 when council tax bands were set, and no government has dared touch them since. Labour is set to ask owners to submit their own valuations, a process which will be tricky to evaluate or police. Properties in a corporate envelope are taxed based on self-valuations currently, and the party wants to extend the system. But it might be harder to work out the value of a house which has not been sold for 30 years than it is to put a number on a corporate asset. Labour estimates the tax will apply to below 0.5 per cent of all homes, amounting to around 100,000 properties. Surveyors’ and estate agents’ figures range from E.surv’s estimate of 60,000 homes to Knight Frank’s 110,000. HOW MUCH WILL IT BRING IN? The next problem is working out exactly how much the tax will raise. Labour wants to bring in £1.2bn from the tax. The party plans to charge those with homes worth £2m to £3m an extra £250 per month, or £3,000 per year. If all the homes were charged £3,000, it would raise £300m – one-quarter of the target. That raises questions as to how much the homes worth above £3m would pay. Labour has not given a firm answer yet, but does say it would be proportionate,

Try Investegate on Google to locate today's schedule 1 Aim announcement by Cleeve Capital

Home scheme off to a flier More than 50,000 people have expressed interest in buying cut-price homes under a Government scheme. Some 52,225 have signed an online register launched by the House Builders' Federation last month for taking advantage of the Starter Homes initiative. The policy, launched by the Coalition at the end of last year, offers first-time buyers aged under 40 a brand new home at 20 per cent off the normal asking price. The discount will be funded by waiving the fees home-builders have to pay to local authorities under so-called Section 106 agreements, which can amount to £45,000 per dwelling.

HIGH STREET AVOIDED OVER EASTER Not a great weekend for Britain's high street retailers, with wet weather driving a significant fall in shoppers against last year, according to data from Springboard. Footfall was down 4.7pc between Easter Friday and Easter Monday, despite some retailers anticipating a bumper Easter period