News

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) will today announce the appointment of a trio of non-executive directors in an effort to demonstrate that Britain's second-largest bank by market value is addressing shareholder concerns in the wake of its £12bn rights issue.

The Daily Telegraph has learned that RBS is to unveil Stephen Hester, the chief executive of British Land, Arthur Ryan, the former chairman of Prudential Financial of the US, and John McFarlane, a former banker with Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), as non-executives.

German market research group GfK has decided not to pursue a £1.1bn bid for the UK market research company Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS). The move will be welcomed by Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP Group, which has been embroiled in a fierce bid battle with GfK for TNS over the past few months. The German company's board decided last night it would not pursue an offer for TNS after talks with Apax over financing for a cash bid fell apart, reports the Telegraph.

Henderson Group is close to quitting Britain for tax reasons in a move that would send shockwaves through the City and the Treasury. The asset manager is expected to announce at its interim results tomorrow that it has been considering relocating abroad because of Britain's increasingly uncompetitive business tax regime, reports the Telegraph.

BT is considering the sale of its 31% stake in Tech Mahindra, the India-listed software services firm, having decided that the holding does not fit its long-term strategy. The UK telecoms company is keen to sell all or a large part of its stake in the joint venture, which has a market capitalisation of about $2.2bn, according to people with knowledge of the situation, writes the FT.

Helphire has been forced to seek a ruling from the European Court of Justice in an attempt to recover more than £5.3m from the Motor Insurers' Bureau. The dispute highlights the animosity between Helphire, which rents replacement vehicles to motorists involved in accidents while their own cars are repaired, and the insurance industry, which ultimately pays for the hire cars, reports the Telegraph.

Insolvency experts are predicting that as many as 300 smaller US banks will fail over the next three years as the economy edges towards recession. The warning from Begbies Traynor's international network came as spread-betting firm Capital Spreads quadrupled the minimum margin requirement for positions on US banks in anticipation of heavy short-selling due to similar concerns, reports the Telegraph.

Fears that taxpayers may end up footing an even bigger bill for Northern Rock intensified yesterday after it emerged that the nationalised bank was suffering dramatically high default rates, Standard & Poor's said. Repossessions of Rock mortgagees were also rising at a far higher rate than other lenders with the problem identified in Granite, the £40bn offshore trust that holds many of Rock's mortgages and provides monthly performance figures to its bondholders, reports the Times.

Energy companies could escape a windfall tax on their huge profits if they do more to help people struggling to pay their fuel bills. Ministers will tell gas and electricity bosses that they want them to take further action to combat fuel poverty, reports the Independent.

Meanwhile, the energy industry has claimed that the public would bear the brunt of a windfall tax, giving warning that there was serious risk of bills going up. "If you take money out of the companies and they have to find it somewhere else, then their investment costs will go up and customers will have to bear the brunt of that," said David Porter, chief executive of the Association of Electricity Producers. "There is a serious risk that bills would go up, " writes the Times.

China's economy should recover its growth trajectory after two weeks of self-imposed slowdown during the Olympics, miner Rio Tinto said yesterday. The world's second-largest mining group said that it expected Chinese economic growth to remain strong this year despite a hiatus over the past month, reports the Times.