All Business

Buyout legend Jon Moulton and turnaround specialist RJD Partners are preparing bids for motoring divisions being auctioned by Aviva this month.

Clive Cowdery, boss of the Resolution buyout fund, has turned down approaches from Bradford & Bingley's big four investors to return to the mortgage lender once its £400m rights issue is underwritten.

The extent of the collapse in the housebuilding market will be revealed this week with trading statements from Barratt Developments and Persimmon, two of the sector's big three.

The management of Electronic Data Processing, the London-listed technology group, is believed to be readying itself to make a bid for the firm as early as this week.

Friends Provident's chairman, Sir Adrian Montague, will come under renewed pressure this week, with the group's proposed sell-off of asset management division F&C, high-end insurance arm Lombard and wealth manager Pantheon now thought to be in grave doubt.

The McLaren Formula One team starts today's British Grand Prix trailing its rival Ferrari in the standings, but it could be in for a timely boost as questions are raised about the validity of the $100m (£50m) fine slapped on it last year.

Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov has called for the creation of a $100bn Russian mining champion, ahead of an intense boardroom battle with former friend and business partner Vladimir Potanin tomorrow.

The first legal action against the insurer Scottish Widows, facing allegations of negligence over advice given to up to 100 pension schemes between 1999 and 2000, has been filed in the Scottish courts by WTL International, a Macclesfield-based engineering firm.

Around 10 firms have applied to take on the poisoned chalice of valuing Northern Rock, in spite of the threat of possible legal action, Treasury officials have confirmed.

Property giant Land Securities will decide at a board meeting in two weeks whether to sell its Trillium outsourcing and infrastructure business.

In these frugal days, buying Tesco's mushroom risotto for £1.99 rather than paying double at Marks & Spencer looks a good deal. Even the better-off are now going to cheaper shops to save on food now that petrol costs as much as gold. It's this change in behaviour that is hurting Marks & Spencer so badly and which prompted last week's profit warning. And it's why Sir Stuart Rose is going to have to pull off the performance of his life when he appears at the Royal Festival Hall this Wednesday.

Once again, Tony Pidgley, the Barnardo's boy turned multimillionaire residential builder, is set to make a killing out of a property downturn. While his peers at Barratt and Taylor Wimpey were getting ready to announce mass redundancies and desperately trying to shore up their balance sheets in the worst housing crisis since the early 1990s, the 60-year-old chief executive of Berkeley announced two weeks ago that the company would spend £350m on cheap land.

Dropped names litter Nancy Cruickshank's conversation like confetti at a society wedding. The good and the great of the rapidly converging world of publishing – online, newspaper, magazine, masthead television, and, er, knowledge video platform – march along in loose formation amid the lava flow of words issuing from her mouth.

The City Diary

Gordon Brown has campaigned forcefully for a 100 per cent write-off for Third World debt. Yet, while cancelling foreign loans, he has presided over an unprecedented 10-year explosion in domestic debt.

The Government has been forced to scour Northern Rock's records for details of its dealings with Zimbabwe after it emerged that the newly nationalised bank had been touting for business in Robert Mugabe's pariah state.

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in South Korea's capital against U.S. beef imports, as a pro-government group staged a counter-rally calling for an end to weeks of sometimes-violent protests.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Oil major BP said on Saturday it is suing its partners in the Russian venture TNK-BP in London for 8.4 billion roubles (180.2 million pounds), money it believes should not have been paid out as back-tax claims in Russia.

LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England looks set to hold interest rates steady for the third month running next week as policymakers seem trapped between high inflation on one side and sharply slowing growth on the other.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The situation on the oil market is likely to ease in 2009/2010 as more production comes on-stream, then tighten again through 2013 as output falls and demand rises, the head of the International Energy Agency said.