Tuesday newspaper round-up: LSE/ICE, Apple, Google, ECB

London Stock Exchange’s £20bn merger with Deutsche Boerse could be gatecrashed by the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, according to reports. Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which operates global exchanges, clearing houses and data services, has appointed Morgan Stanley to advise on a higher offer for the British group, it is claimed. – Telegraph

Central banks must behave more like “pawnbrokers” to stamp out recklessness and put an end to taxpayer-backed bail-outs, according to the former Bank of England Governor. Lord King says the financial crisis of 2008 shows the concept of a central bank acting as “lender of last resort” when financial institutions have run out of options is “in need of updating”. - Telegraph

Apple has defeated a US government attempt to force it to unlock an iPhone as part of a criminal investigation into a drugs case, handing it an important victory in the first test case on the issue. The decision, by a federal judge in New York, comes two weeks after Apple sought a showdown with the FBI over a separate demand in California requiring it to break into an iPhone that had belonged to one of the shooters in the San Bernardino massacre. – Financial Times

One of Google’s driverless cars has been involved in an accident for the first time in a situation where human drivers rely on the normal social etiquette of the road to avoid scrapes, according to an accident report filed in California. The incident highlights the challenges of programming machines to deal with the sort of social situations that humans encounter every day on the roads, but which are beyond robots to resolve, experts said. – Financial Times

More than 1,000 fund managers, hedge funds, brokers and smaller banks will be exempt from the EU’s bonus cap after the Bank of England said it had concluded they did not fall within the scope of the rules. The cap limits bonuses to one times salary – or twice if shareholders approve – and is opposed by the Bank, which argues that it pushes up fixed pay and makes it harder to claw back bonuses when things go wrong. – Guardian

The European Central Bank is under growing pressure to step up support for the eurozone’s flagging economy after the bloc slipped back into negative inflation in February. The surprise drop in prices marked the third time in a year that inflation has turned negative, fanning fears that the eurozone is headed for all-out deflation – a sustained period of falling prices. The news cemented market expectations that the ECB would use its meeting next week to inject fresh cash into the single currency bloc and to cut a key interest rate further into negative territory. – Guardian

Households are borrowing more than £1 billion each month to finance new cars, holidays and big-ticket consumer items in a spending splurge that economists warn could fuel another dangerous debt bubble. Figures from the Bank of England showed that unsecured lending to households rose at the fastest pace in a decade in January, rising by 9.1 per cent, a level not recorded since 2006. In total, consumers borrowed £1.6 billion in January, up from £1.1 billion the month before. – The Times