KILL THE COMPETITION
Welcome to today's round-up of business news from The Times: what we're saying, what they're saying, from Michael Beh
Friday, November 20, 0730 GMT
Top stories
The Times: The telecoms arm of Tesco, the UK's biggest retailer, unveiled plans to offer bundled broadband and home phone packages for the first time.
The Daily Telegraph: The UK is at risk of a "public debt spiral" unless the deficit is cut "drastically", said the OECD, the world's leading economic institution.
The Times: Legal & General, the UK's third-largest insurer, identified John Stewart, the former deputy chief executive of Barclays, as its new chairman.
Comment
David Wighton in The Times: If we curtail the voting rights of short-term investors, we are in danger of treating the symptoms rather than the cause.
Tracy Corrigan in the Daily Telegraph: Private equity needs the medicine it prescribes for others: shrink, rationalise, and emerge smaller but sounder.
Hamish McRae in The Independent: There will have to be spending cuts and tax increases, but it will be very hard to explain all this to the voters.
Upside
The Times: Four City law firms, including a second-tier contender, have been chosen by the Government to handle the sale of its stake in big banks.
Financial Times: The Royal Mint has dramatically ramped up production of gold coins as demand for the precious metal continues to surge.
Wall Street Journal: Microsoft, the software giant, sold twice as many copies of Windows 7 in its first few weeks than any prior version of the operating system.
Downside
The Times: Ladbrokes, the bookmaker, announced plans to close its call centre at Aintree, Liverpool, with the potential loss of 263 jobs.
Wall Street Journal: AOL, the struggling internet company, plans to cut about a third of its staff.
New York Times: Nearly one in 10 US homeowners with mortgages was at least one payment behind in the third quarter.
Mergers and shakers
The Times: JP Morgan Cazenove agreed to sell the remaining half of the UK corporate broker to JP Morgan, the Wall Street giant, for £1 billion ($1.7 billion).
The Times: Nicola Horlick's career as a City fund manager ended after her company sold its main contract to Martin Gilbert's Aberdeen Asset Management.
The Times: Richard Lambert, the head of the CBI, attacked the role that hedge funds with short-term interests play in hostile takeovers of UK companies.
Around Asia
Wall Street Journal: Sony, the electronics giant, released a new plan to add greater online content to more of its gadgets.
The Times: Burberry, the British luxury brand, applied for government clearance to enter a joint venture with Genesis Colors, the Indian fashion retailer.
Wall Street Journal: South Korea unveiled measures to help local firms better manage foreign-exchange risks.
Look ahead
Wall Street Journal: The first gas from Shtokman, a natural gas field in Russia's Arctic waters, will flow into export pipelines in 2015.
New York Times: Computers using the new Chrome operating system from Google, the internet giant, will not be available for a year.
The Independent: James Murdoch, heir to News Corporation, signaled a shift in the media conglomerate's focus to television and entertainment in the future.
MARKETS
FTSE 100 5,267.70 down 1.4% (Thursday close)
Dow 10,332.44 down 0.9% (close)
S&P 500 1,094.90 down 1.3% (close)
Nasdaq 2,156.82 down 1.7% (close)
Nikkei 9,429.59 down 1.3% (latest)
Hang Seng 22,455.08 down 0.8% (latest)
Currencies
Sterling $1.6621/1.1166 euros (latest)
Euro $1.4886 (latest)
Commodities
Brent crude $77.87 up 23 cents (latest)
West Texas crude $77.69 up 23 cents (latest)
Gold $1140.60 down $1.30 (latest)
New York
Reuters: Technology stocks drove a broad-based US sell-off after economic data underscored the fragility of the recovery. Bank of America-Merrill Lynch cut its 2010 growth outlook for the semiconductor industry on concerns about a rising inventory glut. It downgraded 10 stocks, including Intel, which fell 4.1 per cent, Texas Instruments, which fell 3.4 per cent and Marvell Technology, which fell 5.1 per cent. iPod and iPhone maker Apple fell 2.7 per cent. Aluminium producer Alcoa fell 3.9 per cent and steel maker US Steel fell 3.4 per cent as prices for natural resources were pressured by the gain in the dollar.
Asia
Bloomberg: Asian stocks fell in early trade after Merrill Lynch cut its outlook on the global semiconductor industry and commodities retreated. Advantest, the world's biggest maker of memory-chip testers, fell 2.6 per cent in Tokyo. Sony, the maker of the PlayStation 3 game machine, fell 2.8 per cent after pushing back its profitability targets by two years. BHP Billiton, the world's biggest miner, fell 1.6 per cent on lower oil and metal prices. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.3 per cent to 117.14 in morning trade.
Michael Beh
London
Reckitt Benckiser gained 1.1 per cent amid speculation the Cillit Bang maker was considering a tie-up with Colgate-Palmolive, its US rival best known for Colgate toothpaste.
Talk that Reckitt was looking at deals also lifted SSL International, the Durex condom maker which is often seen as a potential target, up 1.5 per cent.
The FTSE 100 dropped 74.43 points to 5,267.70 as investors cashed in on the market's good run so far this month.
Miners were worst hit, with Antofagasta falling 5.4 per cent and Xstrata down 5.1 per cent.
SABMiller was the biggest of just seven blue chip gainers, climbing 3.4 per cent, after the drinks group reported better than expected first half results.
Peter Stiff
