Euan Sutherland, chief executive of the Co-op Group, insisted the bank plan, which will see bondholders provide £500m of capital, represented the “best interests” of stakeholders in the beleaguered mutual.
It came as he disclosed group losses of £709m, largely as a result of a £559m loss in the banking arm, which was hit by a £496m bad debt charge.
‘My first duty is returning UK to growth,’ says Carney
Five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the governor of the Bank of England says the fault lines that caused the crisis have been “substantially repaired”, reports the Daily Mail.
In his first national newspaper interview since succeeding Mervyn King as governor on July 1, Mr Carney said his first duty was to return the UK to growth without breaching the Bank’s anti-inflation mandate. If that means savers may have to endure more years of low returns, so be it, he said.
Consumer confidence rises as jobs and economies gain in UK and US
Consumer confidence has hit its highest level since October 2009, according to research firm GfK’s closely watched barometer of sentiment, reports the Independent.
The managing director, Nick Moon, said the recovery in confidence represented a “conundrum of Alice in Wonderland proportions” as shoppers chose to focus on better economic news rather than declining real incomes.
House prices continue to rise, says Nationwide
House prices rose by 0.6 per cent in August, driven upwards by an improvement in mortgage availability and a continued lack of homes to buy, according to figures from the UK’s biggest building society, reports the Guardian.
This was the 11th consecutive month the index showed a rise and is likely to increase concerns that government efforts to stimulate the market are fuelling unsustainable growth.
Court delivers blow to Portugal bailout programme
Portugal’s constitutional court has ruled that legislation enabling the government to fire public sector workers who cannot be retrained is illegal, blocking a reform that Lisbon sees as critical to meeting the terms of the country’s €78bn (£66.5bn) bailout, reports the Financial Times.
Vodafone nears $130bn sale of Verizon stake
Vodafone is closing in on a windfall of more than $100bn (£65bn) after restarting talks over a sale of its US interests, reports the Daily Telegraph.
Shares leapt to 11-year highs on Thursday as Vodafone confirmed it had opened negotiations on selling its stake in Verizon Wireless, America’s largest mobile network to its American partner.
UK gas imports hit record high of 1trn cubic feet in first six months of 2013
Britain’s gas imports hit 1trn cubic feet in the first half of this year - the highest level on record - as North Sea production dwindled and cold weather boosted demand, reports the Daily Telegraph.
Government provisional figures released on Thursday showed a 9.3pc jump in gas imports in the first six months of 2013 against the same period of 2012.
Nasdaq blames software flaw for trading outage
Nasdaq OMX has blamed a software flaw and more than 26 times the normal amount of data coming from rival NYSE Euronext in “a confluence of unprecedented events” that caused the technical glitch behind the longest trading halt in Nasdaq’s history, reports the Financial Times.
