Sunday newspaper round-up: GSK, Sainsbury's, BT, Imagination Technologies

Financial institutions in the City of London are fairly pleased with David Cameron’s agreement with the European Union ahead of June's referendum as it looks to have secured the Square Mile from excessive further Brussels red tape. A potentially painful sticking point has been avoided as financial freedoms are covered in the first section of the agreement, the Sunday Times said, with countries outside the eurozone have been given the right to determine how their banks and other big institutions are regulated.

Sainsbury's bid for Argos owner Home Retail Group has been thrown into turmoil by a last-minute £1.4bn bid by South Africa's Steinhoff International. Steinhoff, which is 17% owned by billionaire Iceland and New Look owner Christo Wiese, has approached HRG with a cash offer believed to be worth 175p a share, the Mail on Sunday reported, which is above Sainsbury’s 160p mixture of cash and shares that was due to be formalised on Tuesday evening.

The Sunday Times reported that Sainsbury's could seek an extension to the deadline as it battles Steinhoff, which owns Bensons for Beds and Harveys in Britain, though the value of the supermarket group's bid has risen to 167p as its shares have appreciated. Bernstein analyst Bruno Monteyne said he expected Sainsbury’s to match the Steinhoff bid.

Revenues from GlaxoSmithKline's biggest-selling drug, asthma treatment Advair, will be devastated by two rival, generic treatments in development by its rivals. Competitor Mylan has now submitted an application for its US Food and Drug Administration, the Sunday Times reported, with the regulator able to approve the drug early next year.

BT will not be forced by regulator Ofcom to sell its Openreach infrastructure arm, the Mail on Sunday said. But the telecoms giant is expected to propose a greater separation of Openreach from the rest of the company, including the possibility of a separate board and a new corporate structure for Openreach or more rules to reduce the influence of BT group management over its strategy.

Smartphone chip designer Imagination Technologies has held talks with potential US suitor Rambus about a potential £850m bid. The Nasdaq-listed company was rejected when it made an informal bid last year, inside sources told the Sunday Times.

The auction for a majority stake of National Grid's £11bn gas pipeline arm is set to kick off in late spring, with jostling suitors including a group made up of Canada’s Borealis Infrastructure, Wren House, a division of Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund, and the Universities Superannuation Scheme.

Banks remain concerned that one their most popular means of raising money, via the contingent convertible or CoCo bond market, has dried up. European lenders had planned to issue €40bn of bonds this year, the Sunday Telegraph reported, but the dive in CoCo prices and only partial rebound has seen no issuances in 2016, leaving a big question market over the industry.

Taxpayer owned banks Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group are both expected to unveil combined closures of more than 400 bank branches this week alongside their results. Squashed by low interest rates and high bills for PPI misselling, the pair are forecast to announce tougher cost cutting in coming years, the Sunday Telegraph said, with only political pressures preventing much larger cuts.

The two banks' results will see around £10bn paid out in dividends and bonuses, the Mail on Sunday said. This would result in Lloyds paying the treasury £180m from its 9% stake, while an RBS' dividend is still being withheld.

Permission needs to be gained from the Bank of England, with Lloyds chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio aiming to pay about £1.5bn, or 2p a share, in an ordinary dividend and £500m or more in a one-off special dividend. A big payout would be politically charged because of the £20bn bailout the bank received at the height of the financial crisis, the Sunday Times noted.

Going the other way, like many of its peers, mining giant BHP Billiton is expected to reduce its ,massive $6.6bn (£4.6bn) payout by about 50%. The Sunday Times noted that as well as the plunging prices of commodities, BHP faces billions of dollars in damages after the Samarco dam burst last year.

Pearson is expected to write down the value of its overseas divisions to such an extent that it would have slipped into a annual loss had it not been for the sale of the Economist last year, the Sunday Times said. Results are due on Friday.

Write-downs will also hit Ladbrokes and William Hill as their annual results are hammered by the first full year of paying the point-of-consumption tax, a 15% levy on online gambling profits and greater regulation of fixed odds betting terminals taxed at 25% and now restricted to four per shop. Ladbrokes will report the first statutory loss in its history, the Sunday Times said, after taking a huge writedown on the value of its ageing betting shops and paying an extra £40m in taxes last year, while Hills is forecast to endure profits plummeting 22%.

Gambling software company Playtech is pondering a £250m bid for software developer OpenBet and another for Canada's Amaya. The FTSE 250 company has been under pressure to spend or return its £600m cash pile, the Sunday Times reported, with the potential warchest expanding to £800m if stakes it owns in its rivals are sold.

Clothing retailer Joules has hired advisers for a London flotation that could value the business, which is backed by Lloyds' private equity arm LDC, at more than £150m. The Sunday Telegraph said a float was expected in April or May, run by brokers Librium and Peel Hunt.

A new, London-listed shell company will be created to buy the football pools from current owner Sportech for roughly £100m. Sportech has granted Hogg preferred bidder status ahead of other suitors, the Sunday Times reported, which had been battling AIM-listed Netplay until late last year.

Chancellor George Osborne is plotting a £4bn “tax bombshell” that would hit hundreds of thousands of people saving for their pensions by abolishing the tax-free lump sum, according to a former pensions minister. Currently people can access 25% of their pension pots tax-free in a single lump sum when they reach 55 but Osborne would like to scrap all tax relief on pension contributions and replace it with an Isa-style system, the Sunday Times reported.