Friday newspaper round-up: China, RBS, bitcoin

China’s structural reforms will not be enough to arrest its rising debt and another credit rating downgrade for the country is possible unless it gets its ballooning borrowing in check, two officials at Moody’s ratings agency have said. Doubling down on comments earlier this week that China’s financial strength will be eroded because of huge corporate and household debt, Moody’s said the country’s “vast reform agenda” would not be enough to prevent borrowing from weighing on economic growth. - Guardian

A group of “diehard” shareholders determined to see the former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Fred Goodwin in court are refusing to accept a settlement in their £700m legal claim against the bank. The state-backed lender has offered about £200m, or 82p per share held by investors, in an attempt to avoid a case that would see Goodwin take the stand on either 8 or 9 June. - Guardian

GCHQ has demanded that directors start taking charge of cyber security, warning that they are “devolving responsibility” for protecting businesses from hackers. Ciaran Martin, the head of the agency’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said it is unacceptable for boards to plead ignorance about the threat from cyber attacks. – Telegraph

Theresa May's manifesto risks losing the Conservatives their image as the party of business, The Daily Telegraph can disclose, after Britian’s small companies overwhelmingly rejected their policies and questioned the lack of costing in the policy diktat. A vanishingly small proportion of companies support the manifesto, while the Prime Minister’s mantra of “strong and stable leadership” achieves only modest backing. – Telegraph

The political fallout has been unrelenting since the collapse of the longest running criminal trial in the history of the Irish state. Judge John Aylmer directed the jury in Dublin’s central criminal court this week to acquit Sean Fitzpatrick, former chairman and chief executive of Anglo Irish bank, of charges of false accounting and concealing loans. – The Times

The price of bitcoin jumped by nearly 13 per cent to hit an all-time high of almost $2,800 yesterday, as the digital currency built on a rally in which its value has surged by more than 600 per cent in the past year. One bitcoin was worth about 5p seven years ago, which means that an investment of less than £23.20 then would now be worth more than £1 million. Bitcoin set a record of $2,791.70 in the morning but the price, which is notoriously volatile, plunged to $2,362 in the afternoon. It was last trading at $2,514. – The Times