Monday newspaper round-up: Fosun, Rolls-Royce, RBS

Guo Guangchang, the Chinese tycoon caught up in Beijing’s anti-corruption drive, has emerged in public for the first time after four days out of sight while assisting a judicial investigation. Mr Guo appeared on stage on Monday to address an annual internal conference of his company, Fosun, but he made no mention of the investigation. – Financial Times

Nationalising Rolls-Royce’s nuclear submarine business, which powers the UK’s Trident deterrent, is one option under consideration by the government should the crisis at Britain’s premier engineering group deepen. David Cameron’s office has had plans drawn up to protect UK interests as Rolls-Royce seeks to recover from five profit warnings in less than two years. Other scenarios include a merger of all or part of Rolls-Royce with BAE Systems, the UK’s biggest defence group. – Financial Times

Royal Bank of Scotland has become embroiled in another scandal after admitting that it was wrong to deny sitting on almost quarter of a million pounds of customer money. The troubled lender said it had now agreed to return cash to as many as 4,500 customers after apologising to them for the mistake. The controversy is a major blow to chief executive Ross McEwan, who has promised to return customer trust to the largely state-owned bank after a series of mis-selling scandals following on from a financial bailout in 2008. – Guardian

Labour and Liberal Democrat peers are threatening to block George Osborne’s plans to water down regulatory powers designed to hold top City bankers to account for banking scandals. Opposition parties want the chancellor to think again about his proposals to unwind tough regulations on banker accountability, introduced by the coalition government only two years ago. – Guardian

The beleaguered education giant Pearson faces a crisis in its British universities business after it imposed steep price rises on academic libraries. A string of leading universities have stopped buying the FTSE 100 company’s teaching materials in a row over charges for ebooks, The Daily Telegraph has learned. – Telegraph

Benchmark, the animal food health business, has reeled in the fish nutrition firm INVE Aquaculture for $342m (£225m) after three years of planning. The Aim-listed company said the acquisition will create a global leader in the aquaculture technology market with customers in more than 70 countries. INVE, a Belgian brand, makes health foods and nutrition products for fish and shrimp farms. – Telegraph

Ryanair’s use of the world’s leading supplier of airline pilots is at the centre of an international investigation into an alleged “especially serious case of tax evasion”. British police and German investigators have searched the Surrey headquarters of Brookfield Aviation International, which was claimed to be supplying half of Ryanair’s pilots. – The Times

HSBC has held talks with Canadian officials about relocating its headquarters from London to Toronto. Discussions were held in October with senior HSBC directors, including Douglas Flint, the chairman, shortly before the global bank said that it would be delaying its headquarters decision from late this year to early next year. – The Times