Friday newspaper round-up: Monte dei Paschi, Hinkley Point, Lloyds

Corrado Passera, the veteran Italian businessman and former industry minister, has teamed up with Swiss bank UBS to present a last-ditch alternative rescue proposal to the board of struggling lender Monte dei Paschi di Siena on Friday. The proposal will be presented to MPS only hours before the world’s oldest bank is expected to be ranked as one of the weakest banks in Europe when the results of the latest European stress tests are published on Friday evening. – Financial Times

The plan to build an £18bn nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point was hit with a last-gasp delay on Thursday night as the government decided to hold a new review hours after EDF, the project’s French developer, gave it the go-ahead. Greg Clark, the business and energy secretary, announced that ministers would once more review the project almost immediately after the EDF board had narrowly voted to approve the scheme. – Financial Times

The luxury property tycoon Christian Candy has insisted he gave his brother Nick gifts worth more than £200m out of family affection and respect for the dying wishes of their late father — and not as part of an alleged plot to evade tax. The largesse Christian handed to his business partner brother include a penthouse apartment at One Hyde Park, where Nick lives with his pop singer wife Holly Valance; the couple’s future family home, a grade II-listed mansion in Chelsea; and £10m in cash. – Guardian

The International Monetary Fund’s top staff misled their own board, made a series of calamitous misjudgments in Greece, became euphoric cheerleaders for the euro project, ignored warning signs of impending crisis, and collectively failed to grasp an elemental concept of currency theory. This is the lacerating verdict of the IMF’s top watchdog on the Fund’s tangled political role in the eurozone debt crisis, the most damaging episode in the history of the Bretton Woods institutions. – Telegraph

Across the UK, businesses with international interests are thinking hard about their trading strategies in a post-EU world. It goes without saying that all of them hope that eventual negotiations deliver the best possible terms of trade for British firms.Yet in the parallel universe that is Westminster, the debate seems to have leapfrogged the steady, logical, and principles-based consideration required at a time of fundamental transition and change. – Telgraph

Millions of customers of Lloyds may not see the Bank of England’s expected cut in interest rates next week passed on to them, after the bank said yesterday that it would consider its options in the wake of any move. Any decision by the UK’s largest retail bank not to pass on a cut could put Lloyds on a collision course with regulators and trigger anger among borrowers. However, it would be welcomed by savers, many of whom already earn near-zero rates on their money. – The Times

The number of people being declared insolvent has risen by more than a fifth. In the second quarter 22,503 people were made insolvent, 22 per cent higher than the same period in 2015, and a 6.9 per cent increase on the first three months of 2016. It was the fourth quarterly rise in a row, although insolvency rates remain relatively low by historical standards. R3, the insolvency trade body, said the rise was concerning. “This is the most sustained rise in personal insolvency numbers since the financial crisis,” Andrew Tate, president of R3, said. – The Times