Tuesday newspaper round-up: China jitters, bank woe, LSE-ICE, Credit Suisse

Jitters over the health of the Chinese economy could trigger a bloodbath on financial markets if a hard landing materialises, the International Monetary Fund has warned. The IMF said policy choices in the world's second largest economy would also have "increasing implications for global financial stability" in the coming years as the country opens up its bond and equity markets. - Telegraph

City banks have suffered their worst start to a year since the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis as investors and companies worldwide shun markets and as the cost of regulation bites deeper into industry margins. Global investment banking fees totalled £11.4 billion in the first three months of the year, a decline of nearly 30 per cent compared with the first quarter of last year. - Times

The biggest banks in the world have incentives to play down the risks they are taking, a top global regulator has warned. William Coen, secretary general of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, said lenders had made “very good progress” in building up capital buffers since the financial crash, but warned that big banks could be underplaying their risks to reduce the amount of capital they hold, thereby boosting profits. - Telegraph

The battle to take over the London Stock Exchange intensified last night when the owner of the New York Stock Exchange secured funding from American and Asian banks as it prepares its own £10 billion bid. InterContinental Exchange has reached agreement with Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Mitsubishi UFJ, of Japan, to provide part of the debt required to finance an offer for the London exchange. - Times

Oil prices fell after Iran indicated it would continue to increase production and exports until it reaches the market position it enjoyed before the imposition of sanctions, oil minister Bijan Zanganeh was quoted by the semi-official Mehr news agency as saying. Brent crude, the European benchmark for oil, down 0.36pc to $38.54 a barrel on Monday morning. West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, slumped 0.8pc to $36.49, extending Friday’s 4pc tumble. - Telegraph

Motorists have been warned that the period of lower fuel prices is over after the cost of petrol rose last month for the first time since July 2015. Experts said the 3.4p a litre rise in average pump prices to 105p was a result of oil reaching $40 (£28) a barrel for the first time since early December. - Guardian

Credit Suisse is planning a further push into China, where it has been “underweight”, as the bank’s chief executive shrugs aside fears over the slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy. The drive is part of the Swiss bank’s renewed focus on Asia under the strategy of Tidjane Thiam, who took over last summer. Since then, he has been pruning its investment bank in favour of redeploying capital to its wealth management and private banking units. - Financial Times

BP’s $20bn settlement with US authorities for civil penalties and damages over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster has been finalised by a federal court, bringing to an end the government’s legal actions against the company. The order to confirm the settlement, the largest the US Department of Justice has ever agreed with a single company, means the great majority of the costs of the accident are now known. BP has so far set aside $55.5bn to cover clean-up costs, fines, penalties and damages. - Financial Times

Scrapping plans for new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset and building huge amounts of renewable power instead would save the UK tens of billions of pounds, according to an analysis that compares likely future costs. The Intergenerational Foundation thinktank calculated that Britain would pay up to £40bn less for renewable alternatives that would generate the equivalent power to Hinkley over the plant’s planned lifetime. - Guardian

Tilney Bestinvest has acquired rival wealth manager Towry for £600m, bringing the two firms into the private equity stable at Permira and consolidating another corner of the financial advice industry. Tilney said the combined firm will manage £20bn for wealthy clients, four in ten of whom will have more than a million pounds to invest. - Telegraph

French hotels group Accor is acquiring the UK home rentals start-up Onefinestay for €148m, in the latest move by hoteliers to address the threat posed by online competitors from Airbnb to Expedia. Accor, Europe’s largest hotelier by room numbers, said on Tuesday that it would buy out all current shareholders of Onefinestay, a six-year-old company that is an upmarket competitor to Airbnb. - Financial Times

The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) is launching its first shoppers’ sourcing guideto help consumers compare rival supermarkets’ policies when they want to buy British food. Just two weeks after it criticised Tesco for announcing a series of farm brands to sell products, based on British-sounding, but fictitious names, the NFU is publishing up-to-date information on supermarkets’ sourcing policies on own-brand products. - Guardian