Thursday newspaper round-up: Steel industry, energy, HSBC

Tata’s board met for seven hours on Tuesday in the company’s elegant stone headquarters in central Mumbai but one insider said it was clear what the company had to do. “It was very straightforward, not dramatic,” he said, as Tata signalled that, after nine years, several billion pounds of investment and continuing heavy losses, it was putting its British steel operations up for sale. – Financial Times

Qatar’s human rights record has come under renewed scrutiny ahead of its hosting of the 2022 football World Cup, with Amnesty International claiming in a report that workers who are building tournament infrastructure face abuse. Amnesty and other campaigners have long criticised working conditions for the mainly south Asian construction workers who account for most of the 90 per cent of expatriates within the workforce of the gas-rich state. – Financial Times

The backers of an independent proposal to lengthen one of Heathrow’s existing runways have become the latest group to warn that the Government risks a legal challenge if it backs rival plans to build a third landing strip. eathrow Hub, which is led by former Concorde pilot Captain Jock Lowe, has argued that worries about jet engine noise could provide opponents of another runway in west London with grounds to block the mooted project in the courts. – Telegraph

The shape of what’s left of the British steel industry bears the hallmarks of a century and a half of production, even if most of the original furnaces have long since gone cold. Ealy industrialists enjoyed a boom in demand for steel leading up to the First World War, but in a slump that echoes the sector’s current woes, a glut of foreign supply meant the end for many producers in the 1920s. – Telegraph

China’s biggest listed steelmaker has said it expects to increase output by 20% in 2016, underlining the problems facing the British steel industry amid a global glut of supply. Even as China steps up efforts to slash its bloated steel making capacity amid a rise in anti-dumping complaints, Baosteel said it produced 22.6m tonnes of crude steel in 2015 and is likely to produce 27.1m tonnes this year. – Guardian

A £2.8bn government scheme funded by energy bill payers which aims to keep the lights on in Britain has been condemned as wasteful, expensive and “unfit for purpose” in a damning report. The claims from the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) comes on the day that one of the UK’s biggest coal-fired power stations, Ferrybridge, formally closes, with several others threatening to follow. - Guardian

The failure of HSBC to clean up its act after an anti-money-laundering deal with America’s justice department has raised the possibility that US authorities may continue to monitor Britain’s biggest bank. HSBC revealed in its annual report last month that Michael Cherkasky, the independent monitor appointed by regulators in the United States to oversee HSBC’s clean-up, had expressed “significant concerns” about “instances of financial crime”. – The Times

The former boss of one of Britain’s biggest energy suppliers has warned that the safety buffer separating Britain from power cuts will be uncomfortably slim for up to four years. Experts had already warned this winter that Britain was at its highest risk of blackouts in more than a decade before the announcement of a succession of closures of coal-fired power stations. – The Times