Thursday newspaper round-up: RBS, ITV, Tata, BP

George Osborne will have to consider selling the public stake in Royal Bank of Scotland at a loss because keeping it in the public sector is bad for the bank and the economy, the outgoing head of the Treasury has claimed. Sir Nick Macpherson said it was “going to be tricky” for the state to sell all of its £19.2bn stake in RBS before the next election — a sale intended by Mr Osborne to deliver “the largest privatisation proceeds of all time”. – Financial Times

British broadcaster ITV is aiming to go the whole hog as it considers making a takeover approach for Entertainment One, majority owner of Peppa Pig, people familiar with the matter say. The London-based TV company has had preliminary talks with the Canadian group, which owns a majority stake in the cartoon franchise, about a potential deal, but no decision has been taken yet, said people informed about the situation. – Financial Times

Tata could suffer another £100m of losses on its unprofitable UK steel operations before the company finally sells them off or shuts them down. The company’s Indian parent threw in the towel on its UK strip steel business - which is losing £1m a day – a fortnight ago, putting it up for sale and placing up to 40,000 British jobs in jeopardy. – Telegraph

Five of the big eight US banks have failed to come up with a solid plan to explain how they could be safely wound down or broken into chunks in the event that they collapse in a future financial crisis or recession. The so-called "living wills" are a crucial part of the plan to make sure a bank’s collapse does not wreck the financial system and the wider economy. – Telegraph

The government is likely to favour the rich in the next budget with further reductions in capital gains tax rates, despite concerns about inequality, according to Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank. Inheritance tax could be cut further in the near future, said Johnson, because it was deeply unpopular as more households were drawn into the net, Johnson said. – Guardian

The Institute of Directors has made a rare intervention on executive pay, urgingBP shareholders to think twice before backing a decision to award $20m (£14m) to chief executive Bob Dudley in a year when the company ran up its worst-ever losses. Simon Walker, the director general of the IoD, said the enormous remuneration deal for 2015 sent “the wrong message” to investors and other boards, given the $6.5bn annual loss and the decision to axe 7,000 jobs. – Guardian

Unsecured consumer borrowing is growing at its fastest rate for 11 years as supermarkets and car dealers offer more credit to customers and water down their credit-scoring criteria. The annual growth rate in the stock of consumer credit rose to 9.3 per cent in February, its highest since before the financial crisis, according to the latest Bank of England quarterly credit conditions review, published yesterday. – The Times