Friday newspaper round-up: LLoyds Bank, NZ zero hour contracts, Libor traders

In 2009, Newham Council took what it thought was a canny financial bet: that interest rates would rise. The east London borough, the second most deprived local authority in England at the time, was an unlikely participant in the complicated world of structured finance. The council took out six loans worth £150m on which the rate of interest would fall if long-term interest rates rose: and vice-versa. But interest rates did not go up: they fell to an historic low. And now the council is facing mounting questions about its gamble. – Financial Times

Lloyds Bank has launched a new £1bn fund to help owners of commercial real estate improve the energy efficiency of their buildings. The bank claims that over the life of the fund, the amount of energy saved could be as much as 110,000 tonnes of carbon – equivalent to the output of more than 22,000 homes. Property owners will be able to access the fund, which is the first of its kind, after undergoing a test to assess how much energy efficiency a borrower can achieve. – Telegraph

Paintbox, the company that uses robots to paint Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin cars, has sealed a multi-million-pound deal with the Business Growth Fund (BGF), the venture capital fund backed by Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS. The Midlands-based company uses hi-tech machines to paint a host of luxury cars and turns over £50m a year, but has sought backing from venture capitalists and the banks to fund new robotic paint plants, with the first opening in Birmingham in the autumn. – Telegragh

Labour would borrow billions of pounds to fund public investment projects, while exerting an “iron discipline” over day-to-day spending, shadow chancellorJohn McDonnell has said, as he seeks to win back the party’s reputation for economic competence. In an interview with the Guardian, he described shoring up Labour’s fiscal credibility as “the struggle of a generation”, but insisted that exerting tight control over spending did not signal the abandonment of Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity stance. – Guardian

Zero-hour contracts have been outlawed in New Zealand after parliament unanimously passed a bill to ban the controversial practice. Political parties across the board supported the ban, which is being hailed as a major victory for minimum wage workers, particularly in the fast-food industry. – Guardian

Two British citizens were sentenced to prison in New York last night after being convicted in the first US trial arising from a global investigation into manipulation of Libor, the leading benchmark for pricing financial transactions. Anthony Allen, Rabobank’s former global head of liquidity and finance, was sentenced to two years in jail. Anthony Conti, a former senior trader, was sentenced to one year in prison. – The Times