News

Tesco's customers are defecting to its rivals Asda and Wm Morrison at record rates, The Times has learnt.

Previously unpublished "switching" data provided by the industry analysts TNS Worldpanel reveals that, in the 12 weeks to 2 November, about £22m of spending was switched directly from Tesco to Asda. Just over £10m more went from Tesco to Aldi, the German-owned discount retailer, in the period and almost as much again to Morrisons.

Ernst & Young is preparing to sell Robinson Way, London Scottish Bank's profitable debt collection business, after being appointed to run the failed sub-prime lender and savings provider yesterday. It is understood that the administrator is preparing an information memorandum to send to interested bidders and will formally auction the business within weeks, reports the Times.

Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, paved the way last night for US interest rates to be cut to an unprecedented low of under 1% this month, and sought to reassure markets that the Fed could deploy other weapons from its arsenal even if it were forced to cut rates to zero, reports the Times.

New Star Asset Management's financial problems were thrust into the spotlight after the City regulator rejected its pleas to suspend trading in its shares. Defending the City watchdog's decision, a FSA spokesman said: "New Star had not made a formal request to the UK Listing Authority to suspend its shares when it made the RNS announcement. We reviewed the suspension request but did not see a case for suspension". New Star's move is believed to be unprecedented and the FSA's rejection left the fund manager in an embarrassing situation, reports the Telegraph.

The collapse of Woolworths had a severe knock-on effect yesterday when Zavvi, the UK's second biggest record chain, was left with no copies of highly-anticipated new albums from Take That and Britney Spears. Zavvi, formerly known as Virgin Megastores, has an exclusive supply agreement with EUK, the distribution arm of the Woolworths Group. The failure to sell two of the year's biggest albums on their first day of release is likely to have cost Zavvi hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost sales, reports the Telegraph.

Persimmon has become the latest housebuilder to look at prematurely refinancing its debt in an attempt to avoid a possible breach of its banking covenants. The developer has appointed NM?Rothschild, the investment bank, to help it renegotiate terms for its £900m net debt, according to people close to the situation, reports the FT.

Leading European companies are facing spiralling funding costs in the bond markets as banks rein in lending, raising concerns about the impact on earnings. Over the past month European companies including National Grid and Daimler sold more than €23bn of bonds, with nearly €11bn sold in the past week, making it one of the busiest in the bond markets this year, say data providers Dealogic, reports the FT.

One of the world's most prominent hedge fund managers, Paul Tudor Jones, has frozen redemptions from his $10bn (£6.7bn) flagship fund, after investors made a dash for the exits. The industry veteran is the latest forced into emergency measures to battle the crisis facing the hedge fund sector, something Mr Tudor described in a letter to clients as tacking to "the demands of these tumultuous times" reports the Independent.

The value of cancelled merger deals for this quarter is closing in on the value of deals actually completed and the two measures will draw level if the mammoth takeover of Canadian telecommunications group BCE falls through. With BHP Billiton dropping its bid for Rio Tinto last week, the dollar value of merger deals cancelled so far this quarter rose to $322bn compared with $362bn in completed M&A transactions, data from Thomson Reuters show, reports the FT.