Goldtrail holidaymakers face long wait for refunds
Holidaymakers who booked with failed tour operator Goldtrail will have to wait up to three months for a refund under an already-strained government insurance scheme, but the company's collapse is likely to boost profits for the industry's two remaining giants. City analysts predicted that Goldtrail's collapse would play into the hands of industry leaders Thomas Cook and Tui Travel, and add to fears that the holiday market has become overly concentrated. Click her for the full story >>

UK employers lag behind US in maximising profit from their people
UK businesses are lagging behind their US counterparts at maximising profit from their investment in people, according to research by professional services firm PwC. The PricewaterhouseCoopers Trends in Human Capital report analyses data from more than 10,000 companies in 40 countries to report the pre-tax profit produced for every pound, euro or dollar paid out in remuneration: the human capital return on investment (HC ROI). Click her for the full story >>

Goldman denies links with global food crises
Goldman Sachs has angrily defended itself against a public campaign that claims the bank is exacerbating global food crises through its commodity trading operations. The Wall Street bank has dismissed as "disingenuous and downright misleading" the conclusions by the World Development Movement that its activities have led to increased food prices, food riots, and poverty around the world. The WDM, a London-based non-governmental organisation, on Monday started an on-line campaign to persuade the public to report Goldman to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) as the biggest bank allegedly distorting commodities markets. Click her for the full story >>

Network Rail accused of emotional blackmail over bonuses
A rail union today accused Network Rail (NR) of resorting to "emotional blackmail" to ensure six-figure bonuses for the company's top directors are approved at an annual meeting tomorrow. NR has no shareholders but has around 100 "members", including members of the public, who hold the company's board to account. Click her for the full story >>

Bribery Act in force next April
The new corporate offence of failing to prevent bribery will come into force in April 2011, the Government has announced. However, employers will have just three months to check they have the right policies in place to avoid falling foul of the new legislation. Speaking in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, vowed "effective implementation" of the Bribery Act, which for the first time will make companies liable for the corrupt activities of associated third parties as well as their own staff. Click her for the full story >>

Network Rail boss attacks ‘ill-informed’ bonus critics
The chairman of Network Rail has defended his decision to defy critics — including the Transport Secretary — and pay his executive team £2.3 million in bonuses. In an extraordinary tirade before the rail infrastructure group’s annual meeting in Manchester today, Rick Haythornthwaite has accused those who criticised Network Rail’s decision to pay bonuses of being “often illinformed and possibly with alternative agendas”. Click her for the full story >>

Vedanta faces protests at AGM over ethical record
The environmental and human rights record of the miner Vedanta Resources will be put under the spotlight during its annual meeting next week, when the India-based group will face protests from pressure groups and an attempt by activist shareholders to remove members of the board. Vedanta, the world's biggest zinc producer, declined to comment yesterday on reports that the shareholder lobby group Pirc will propose the removal of Naresh Chandra, a non-executive director who chairs the London-listed group's health, safety and environment committee and its remuneration committee. Mr Chandra, a former Indian home secretary and ambassador to the United States, joined Vedanta's board in 2004. He was not available for comment yesterday. Click her for the full story >>

Tesco rebuked by ASA over bread advert claims
Tesco has been reprimanded by the advertising watchdog for claiming that its in-store bakeries bake every loaf from scratch when the majority are cooked from chilled or frozen. The supermarket chain has been ordered to withdraw its Baked from Scratch campaign after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled it was likely to mislead shoppers. The ASA found the magazine advertisement implied that all Tesco outlets with a bakery made fresh bread from scratch when this was true of only a limited number of stores. Click her for the full story >>

C&W taken to task over pay
Shareholders representing almost a quarter of the share capital of Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC), which predominately operates telecoms services in the Caribbean, failed to back the company's pay policy. Cable & Wireless Worldwide, which operates principally in the UK, fared slightly better with 12pc abstaining or voting against its remuneration report. The boards of both companies were taken to task over executive pay and the groups' highly controversial private-equity style long-term incentive plan (LTIP), which paid out £32m to senior managers last year. Click her for the full story >>

Federal Report Faults Banks on Huge Bonuses
With the financial system on the verge of collapse in late 2008, a group of troubled banks doled out more than $2 billion in bonuses and other payments to their highest earners. Now, the federal authority on banker pay says that nearly 80 percent of that sum was unmerited. In a report to be released on Friday, Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Obama administration’s special master for executive compensation, is expected to name 17 financial companies that made questionable payouts totaling $1.58 billion immediately after accepting billions of dollars of taxpayer aid, according to two government officials with knowledge of his findings who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the report. Click her for the full story >>

Low pay Asda campaigners slip secret notes into clothing
Asda campaigners have begun slipping secret notes into thousands of clothes on sale at Asda to stop customers buying the garments. They want to stop customers buying goods from the superstore until it starts paying higher wages to factory workers across Asia. Activists from the charity Action- Aid claim they have already slipped the notes into items across Britain. They accuse Asda of paying some Bangladeshi workers just £6.70 for a 48-hour week. Click her for the full story >>

Willis slams Aon's stance on contingent commissions
Willis Group Holdings has responded to the announcement by Aon Corporation that it would resume accepting contingent commissions “where appropriate and legally permissible”. Willis has labelled Aon's position on contingent commissions "troublesome and ambiguous" and said it now stands as the world's only insurance broker to refuse to accept contingents in its retail business. The move comes after the broker stepped up its campaign by distributing a third-party white paper detailing what it described as "the conflicts of interest created by the controversial payments". Click her for the full story >>

Trafigura found guilty of exporting toxic waste
A Dutch court has found multinational company Trafigura guilty of illegally exporting toxic waste from the Dutch port of Amsterdam and concealing the nature of the cargo. In 2006, Trafigura transported waste which is alleged to have been involved in the injury of thousands of people in Ivory Coast. Trafigura denied any wrongdoing. The firm was fined 1m euros (£836,894) for its ship, the Probo Koala, transiting Amsterdam with its cargo. Click her for the full story >>

BP oil spill: Transocean rig 'not fully inspected' since 2000
The key safety device on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig used by BP to drill the fateful Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico had not been fully inspected in the last ten years, an internal report commissioned for rig owner Transocean found. The blow-out preventer – the failure of which led to millions of barrels of oil flooding in to the Gulf – had not been inspected in any detail since 2000, while 26 parts and systems on the rig were found to be in "bad or poor" condition just a month before the incident. The reports findings were disclosed in internal Transocean documents leaked to the New York Times, which also showed that workers often "saw unsafe behaviours on the rig." Click her for the full story >>

Dell settles with SEC over fraud charge
Dell agreed to pay a $100m penalty on Thursday to settle a fraud charge by the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging false accounting based on undisclosed payments from Intel. The SEC said in a court filing that Dell would have missed Wall Street expectations for every quarter in a five-year period from 2002 to 2007, but for the payments from Intel to secure the exclusive use of its chips in Dell computers. Michael Dell, the company’s founder and chief executive, and Michael Rollins, a former chief executive, agreed to pay a further $4m and $3m, respectively, to settle accusations that they failed to disclose the real reason for Dell’s wining streak. Click her for the full story >>

Clampdown on corruption
Developing countries will be held to account for the aid they receive, a minister said yesterday. The development minister Stephen O'Brien said he had challenged the Kenyan government over the suspected embezzlement of more than £800,000 intended to support free primary education and had been told that those responsible would be prosecuted. Click her for the full story >>

UK insurance fraud hits record £840bn
'Bogus Britain' made 122,000 insurance claims last year. Not that we're entirely surprised... Having your property stolen or damaged is a pretty unpleasant experience, so it’s easy to see why people would occasionally seek to redress the karmic balance by adding an extra stereo or a shiny new iPod to their insurance claim. Apparently, though, Brits are taking cosmic justice into their own hands a little too often: new figures have shown last year, the insurance industry turned down 122,000 insurance claims – 14% more than the year before. Click her for the full story >>

Hague defends BP to US Senate
British oil major BP Plc behaved in a "perfectly normal and legitimate" way in lobbying the British government in 2007 over a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a letter to a US lawmaker. In the letter to US Senator John Kerry, Hague reiterated the British government's position that there is no evidence BP had any connection to the Scottish authorities' release last year of the man convicted of the 1988 bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland. Click her for the full story >>

BBC executives receive extra pension cash
BBC executives are topping-up their pensions from a secret fund despite asking staff to accept cuts in their own retirement packages, it has emerged. Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, along with eight executive board members are understood to have access to a multi-million pound pension fund, while other members are excluded. It comes after almost 20,000 BBC staff were asked to accept a 1 per cent cap on their pensionable salaries. The staff have a cap on their pensions, but the board receives top-ups that allows them to effectively manoeuver around the rules. Click her for the full story >>

Cable looks to boost lending by banks
Banks are set to come under renewed pressure from the government to increase lending to small firms. Business Secretary Vince Cable says banks are "not acting in the national interest" and measures may be needed. He has suggested dividends and bonuses could be a target as part of a "carrot and stick" approach to boost lending. Click her for the full story >>

Damning verdict on buy-out groups
Private equity groups were accused on Monday of producing disappointing returns while charging their investors fat fees amid glaring conflicts of interest in one of the most scathing critiques of the industry published to date. The attack makes the case that the industry has underperformed stockmarkets, taken excessive risks and overcharged investors. The report from the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, a London-based think-tank, is likely to reignite the debate about the social value of leveraged buy-outs. Click her for the full story >>

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Union urges BA to end 'fixation with conflict'
The Unite union, currently engaged in a bitter cabin crew dispute with British Airways, will be handing out letters to shareholders attending tomorrow's annual meeting of the airline. The letter urges management to end its "fixation with conflict" over a dispute which has already cost BA around £150 million. It is thought that Unite could be joined in the protest in Westminster by a delegation from a Spanish union representing workers with the Iberia airline whose merger with BA is expected to be completed in the next few months. Click here for the full story >>

David Prosser: FTSE chairmen must keep a closer eye on their executives
There is at least one man who is unlikely to share the hostility commonly felt towards Tony Hayward, the embattled boss of BP. Two months ago, in the wake of the disastrous collapse of Prudential's deal to buy the Asian assets of AIG, the knives were out for the British insurer's chief executive, Tidjane Thiam. But it seems the world can cope with only one "should he go or should he stay?" drama at a time. Since the speculation began to mount that Mr Hayward would have no choice but to fall on his sword over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the pressure on Mr Thiam has eased. The oil man has, in other words, done Prudential's boss quite a favour. Indeed, the scale of the BP disaster also sets the insurer's mishap in context. Click here for the full story >>

BP plan to turn Gulf of Mexico crisis into tax loss provokes fury
BP was at the centre of a growing row over its tax liabilities last night after the oil group revealed plans to offset much of the cost of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster against its future profits. The news, which has triggered accusations that British and American taxpayers would effectively underwrite the cost of the spill, prompted anger in Parliament yesterday. John McDonnell, the Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington, told The Times: “I will be asking the Chancellor of the Exchequer what tax subsidies BP is receiving with regard to this and what justification there is for the UK taxpayer bailing out the company in this way.” Click here for the full story >>

Philip Morris Is Said to Benefit From Child Labor
One woman said children as young as 10 working in the fields developed red rashes on their stomachs and necks as they harvested tobacco for use in cigarettes made by Philip Morris. Another migrant laborer working in the tobacco fields in Kazakhstan said a farmer confiscated her identification papers and withheld pay to force her to continue working despite dismal conditions. Human Rights Watch, the group best known for documenting governmental abuse and war crimes, plans to release a report on Wednesday showing that child and forced labor is widespread on farms that supply a cigarette factory owned by Philip Morris International in Kazakhstan, in Central Asia. Click here for the full story >>

Bank bonuses 'must be restrained'
A Treasury minister has called on banks to exercise restraint in paying bonuses when the public and private sectors are under pressure to cut labour costs. Financial Secretary Mark Hoban said banks needed to show they operated in a "fair and stable" way in allocating bonuses this year. He also confirmed the government was looking at ways to tax banks' profits. Last week, the European Parliament approved a deal placing new limits on bankers' bonuses from next year. Click here for the full story >>

Mobile firms failing on coverage
UK mobile phone buyers are not being given sufficient information about how to cancel contracts if they encounter coverage problems, a study has found. In secret shopper tests, the Communications Consumer Panel found that over half of shoppers were given inaccurate information. It also found that some firms allow cancellations due to coverage issues while others do not. The panel called on mobile firms to offer consistent guidelines. Panel chair Anna Bradley said that consumers must be given simple and accurate information before locking themselves into contracts that they might not be able to leave for up to two years. Click here for the full story >>

Asda advert banned in rights row
Supermarket giant Asda has been censured by the advertising watchdog for presenting a basic right as a shopping deal. An advert promoted a new 100-day returns policy for its clothing range but, by rights, shoppers actually have much longer to return any faulty goods. The retailer's advert said that it wanted to end "throwaway" fashion on the High Street. The television commercial was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority. Click here for the full story >>

Glaxo sees £1.57 billion charge after Avandia settled
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L) expects to record a legal charge of 1.57 billion pounds for the second quarter after settling the "substantial majority" of claims relating to its controversial diabetes pill Avandia. The move, designed to clear the decks of outstanding legal issues, will wipe out most of the drugmaker's expected earnings for the three months to June but leaves it better placed to grow profits in future. Click here for the full story >>

Ryanair says sorry to Sir Stelios for 'Pinocchio' ads
Ryanair chief Michael O'Leary has apologised "unreservedly" to Easyjet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou. Ryanair ran adverts depicting Sir Stelios as Pinocchio and suggesting he was lying about Easyjet's punctuality. But Mr O'Leary apologised, saying Sir Stelios was not personally responsible for Easyjet not publishing weekly details of their on-time performance. Sir Stelios dedicated the victory to all those "who have suffered verbal abuse at the hands of O'Leary". Click here for the full story >>

BP admits 'lobbying UK over Libya prisoner transfer scheme but not Lockerbie bomber'
BP is facing fresh scrutiny into whether it was involved in the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, after the oil giant admitted lobbying the British government over a prisoner agreement with Libya. BP said it pressed for a deal over the controversial prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) amid fears any delays to negotiations would damage its “commercial interests” and disrupt its £900 million offshore drilling operations in the region. But it denied claims that it had been involved in negotiations concerning the release of Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber freed by Scottish authorities last year. Click here for the full story >>

Women still minority in UK boardrooms
Women remain a minority in UK boardrooms, according to research by a recruitment company. In the top 100 public companies, women made up 12.6% of executive directors, little changed from last year's 12.2%. Taking into account all 600 companies quoted on the London stock exchange, the figure falls to just 5%. The findings, from headhunters Egon Zehnder, come as the US prepares to introduce boardroom quotas for women and ethnic minorities. Click here for the full story >>

Volvo calls for emission openness
The Swedish carmaker Volvo has called for greater openness about all harmful emissions from cars. Currently, consumers are told how much carbon dioxide CO2 a car emits. But Volvo's UK's managing director Peter Rask told BBC News that buyers should also be told about the level of nitrogen oxide (Nox) and hydrocarbons vehicles churn out. Click here for the full story >>

Shareholders give M&S bloody nose over £15m pay for Bolland
Nearly one in five shareholders refused to support the remuneration report of Marks & Spencer yesterday at its annual meeting, as they rebelled against the £15m its new chief executive Marc Bolland could earn this year. The bloody nose given to M&S over its executive pay is the latest given by investors to a string of blue-chip companies. There were similar votes at the annual meetings of the mining group Xstrata and the consumer-goods company Reckitt Benckiser. Click here for the full story >>

Goldman Sachs agrees record $550m fine
US bank Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $550m (£356m) to settle civil fraud charges of misleading investors. The charges concerned Goldman's marketing of mortgage investments as the US housing market faltered. US finance watchdog the Securities and Exchange Commission said it was the biggest fine for a bank in its history. The UK's Royal Bank of Scotland, which is now 84% owned by the UK taxpayer and lost about $840m in investments, will receive $100m compensation. Click here for the full story >>

Buncefield companies fined £5.35m for oil depot blaze
Companies owned by oil giants BP, Shell and Total were fined a total of £5.35m today for their involvement in the Buncefield oil storage depot explosion and fire ‑ the worst of its kind since the second world war. The relatively modest nature of the fines were immediately attacked as "insulting" by the local Conservative MP for Hemel Hempstead, Mike Penning, while solicitors acting for residents said it was "hardly even a slap on the wrist" for businesses that had endangered the lives and livelihoods of so many. The explosion at the depot nearly five years ago, which registered 2.4 on the Richter scale, injured scores of people and caused structural damage across a wide area.  Click here for the full story >>

BP whistleblower: oil clean-up effort is in disarray
If you've been reading Mother Jones lately, you've heard about BP's stranglehold on media access in the Gulf, which has included preventing reporters from visiting oil-soaked public beaches and barring its spill cleanup workers from talking to the press. Now, one of BP's ex-media enforcers is speaking out. Former BP contractor Adam Dillon went public last Friday, telling a local news station in New Orleans that he was fed up with BP's handling of the spill response, not least of all its information clampdown. In an interview with Mother Jones this week, Dillon, who claims he was fired for raising concerns about the cleanup with his bosses, elaborated on his experiences in the Gulf and vented his frustrations with BP. Click here for the full story >>

Vince Cable: 'banks are misleading small firms'
Vince Cable has attacked bank claims that they are approving at least four out of every five small business loan applications as "misleading" ahead of the launch of Government ideas to improve the flow of finance. The Business Secretary said that the banks had made it more difficult for businesses to apply and that they were failing to meet demand. Market leader Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Lloyds Banking Group have both stated that loan application approvals stand at more than 80pc. Stephen Pegge, chairman of the British Bankers' Association's (BBA) small business panel, recently said the rest of the industry was hitting this rate, too. Click here for the full story >>

FSA could treble last year's fine total
The Financial Services Authority is on track to treble last year's record £22m of fines. The City watchdog has so far imposed penalties totalling £55.6m and has warned that there will be more to come as it pursues a "get tough" policy with City miscreants. Under the FSA's enforcer in chief, Margaret Cole, staff in the division that handles disciplinary cases have doubled to 450 since she took command of the operation in 2005. Click here for the full story >>

Investors snub rule on board elections
Three top shareholders that speak for more than £100 billion of investment have written to 700 companies telling them to defy a key part of the new boardroom code of best practice. Hermes, Railpen and the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) have pledged to back companies that refuse to put their directors up for re-election every year. The new rule has stoked controversy over the shake-up of corporate governance guidelines by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC). Some bosses fear the move, designed to increase transparency in the wake of the banking collapse, will undermine collective decision-making and could leave businesses leaderless if whole boards are ejected at once. Click here for the full story >>

Hedge funds accused of gambling with lives of the poorest as food prices soar
Financial speculators have come under renewed fire from anti-poverty campaigners for their bets on food prices, blamed for raising the costs of goods such as coffee and chocolate and threatening the livelihoods of farmers in developing countries. The World Development Movement (WDM) will issue a damning report today on the growing role of hedge funds and banks in the commodities markets in recent years, during which time cocoa prices have more than doubled, energy prices have soared and coffee has fluctuated dramatically. Click here for the full story >>

Think Tank: Boardrooms are putting the world to rights
Name three big businesses you think have acted irresponsibly, perhaps through causing environmental damage or buying goods made with child labour. It’s easy, isn’t it? In fact, you can probably name more. Now name three global businesses you think are actively working to protect the environment and promote human rights. More difficult? It shouldn’t be, because in the past decade there has been a genuine shift in how global companies approach their responsibilities. In the 1980s and 1990s campaign groups challenged companies to recognise that climate change was happening and held them to account for human rights abuses in supply chains in east Asia. Although we still see stories of human rights abuses and environmental damage — BP is a case in point — a lot has changed in the right direction. Click here for the full story >>

The developing world has much to teach us about how to do business responsibly
Business and political leaders increasingly call for business to be conducted responsibly after the financial crisis. But what does that mean in a world where, despite globalisation, countries still have different ethical, environmental and behavioural standards? A model of responsible business created simply by imposing Western beliefs is anachronistic, unacceptable and unsuitable for a world where growth is expected to be led by emerging markets. Click here for the full story >>

Tesco greetings cards are costing the earth
Britain’s biggest supermarket group is selling paper products made by a company that is destroying thousands of hectares of Indonesian rainforest and threatening the habitat of the critically endangered Sumatran tiger. Tesco has continued to buy paper products from Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) after Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer cancelled contractsbecause of the company’s environmental record. Click here for the full story >>

Public sector 'to recruit 200 consultants on up to £1,000 a day'
Interim Partners says that since the election it has already had 40 requests from organisations such as hospitals and councils who are looking for experts to slash spending, five times as many as it had this time last year. It predicts that many more will be taken on later this year when Whitehall departments are given full details of the budget cuts they must make to help balance the Government’s books. Click here for the full story >>

Kraft cuts majority of Cadbury HQ's senior staff
Kraft Foods, the US food company behind the Oreo and Toblerone brands, has cut almost three-quarters of Cadbury’s senior staff who worked at its head office and were covered by global contracts. Kraft bought Cadbury’s in January for £11.7bn after a fiercely-contested takeover battle. At the time of the deal there were around 165 senior managers at Cadbury’s headquarters. However only around 45 of these are understood to have taken up new roles in the larger Kraft business. Click here for the full story >>

United Nations warned that corruption is undermining grants to stop logging
A revolutionary scheme backed by the World Bank to pay poor countries billions of dollars a year to stop felling trees is the best way to stop logging and save the planet from climate change, according to wealthy countries and conservationists, yet documents seen by the Observer show the plan is actually leading to corruption and possibly more logging. Human rights and environment groups yesterday called for a radical rethink of the United Nations scheme, known as Redd (Reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation), after it emerged that many countries were trying to cheat the system. Click here for the full story >>

Fresh warning to M&S over Bolland pay
Marks & Spencer is facing the fresh threat of a shareholder rebellion as an influential pension fund consultant called for a veto of its pay report at the annual meeting next week. Pirc, which advises funds with £1.5 trillion in assets, said that it was concerned about a £14.8 million signing-on package for Marc Bolland, the retailer’s new chief executive. Click here for the full story >>

Milton Friedman got it wrong on profit being the only aim, HSBC chief Green argues
American free market economics guru Milton Friedman was wrong to assert that companies should focus on shareholder value above all other considerations, HSBC chairman Stephen Green declared. Mr Green made the claim in a lecture on "Tomorrow's Value" at an event at Mansion House in London, organised by the sustainability think-tank Tomorrow's Company and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, "Of course you need a profit," he said, "but it is a by-product, a hallmark of success. It is not the be all and end all. It is not the raision d'etre of business.” Click here for the full story >>

Ocado's board 'won't comply' with UK Corporate Governance Code
Ocado, the online grocery retailer, has admitted that its board of directors will not comply with the UK Corporate Governance Code that regulates best practice in UK boardrooms when it floats on the stock market this month. The UK Corporate Governance Code recommends that at least half the board of directors of a UK listed company, excluding the chairman, should comprise non-executive directors who are deemed by the company to be "independent in character and judgement and free from relationships or circumstances which may affect, or could appear to affect, the director's judgement". Click here for the full story >>

MEPs approve tough new curbs on the City's bonus culture
Europe-wide curbs on bankers' pay were approved by the European Parliament yesterday as the City of London prepared a charm offensive in a bid to stave off further regulatory assaults. The new rules, which include capping the cash proportion of any payment at 30 per cent – 20 per cent for bigger payouts – will also apply to the likes of hedge fund managers and staff of other financial companies. Arlene McCarthy, the MEP responsible for the deal with the European Commission that has seen the rules passed into law, said they would "transform the bonus culture and end incentives for excessive risk-taking". Click here for the full story >>

1,000 Britons a week complain about being mis-sold payment protection
More than 1,000 people a week are pursuing mis-selling claims about payment-protection insurance (PPI) after having their complaints rejected by the banks, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) revealed yesterday. The ombudsman said it was receiving some 200 complaints every working day relating to the insurance cover from people unhappy with the way providers had dealt with their complaint. The FOS had expected to receive around 46,000 complaints about PPI this year, but figures now suggest the total will be far higher than this. Click here for the full story >>

Connaught inquiry aims to rebuild trust
Sir Roy Gardner has said he "wholeheartedly" believes Connaught's management are "honest people" as he attempts to restore confidence in the beleaguered support services group. Sir Roy, who joined the company as chairman in May, has commissioned an independent investigation into the accounting practices of Connaught, which specialises in repairing and maintaining social housing. Click here for the full story >>

Debt management firm ordered to stop 'inaccurate ads'
The trading watchdog today called on a debt management firm to stop making misleading claims in its advertising. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has imposed a series of requirements on Carefree Group, based in Haworth, near Keighley in Yorkshire, and an associated company Carefree Debt Solutions. The requirements include not making claims that consumers will be debt free within a set period of time without explaining the adverse impact this will have on their credit rating. The firm must also not claim or imply its service is free if it is not, while it must include details of all fees prominently in its advertising. Click here for the full story >>

MPs' scandals covered up on Wikipedia
Getting caught up in a scandal or being publicly embarrassed is an occupational hazard for politicians. Now there are suggestions that some have tried to rewrite history by deleting mentions of their career low-points from Wikipedia, the user-edited online encyclopedia. An investigation has uncovered dozens of cases where MPs' biographical pages on Wikipedia were altered to remove details of past humiliations which had been added by members of the public. Embarrassments which have been deleted include an MP who employed a male escort, an MP who lost his front bench job in a row over racist language, and a female MP whose ex-husband was arrested and deported. Click here for the full story >>

Hester to take on Turner's 'socially useless' banks jibe
The chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland is to say that the publicly-owned bank is putting being "socially useful" at the heart of its operations, in a direct riposte to Lord Adair Turner's claim that much of the financial sector engaged in activity that was "socially useless". In his first public speech in a year, Stephen Hester will say that while it was necessary to bail out the banks, the sector has to do more to explain its importance to the economy. Click here for the full story >>

MPs gain £130 expenses by talking until 1am
MPs have been accused of exploiting new expenses rules by prolonging a debate past 1am in order to claim up to £130 each for staying in hotels. It has been called 'the 1am club’. Despite a tightening of the rules in the wake of last year’s expenses scandal, MPs have been accused of prolonging a debate in order to qualify for overnight hotel allowances. More than 500 members debated the Finance Bill into the small hours last week, triggering for the first time a new rule that entitles MPs – even those with taxpayer-funded second homes – to claim up to £130 for a hotel room if a session has continued beyond 1am. Click here for the full story >>

Happy people really do work harder
Where Slough's most famous office manager leads, eminent economists follow. David Brent's declaration that he wanted to be remembered as "the man who put a smile on the face of all who he met" may once have been dismissed as management mumbo jumbo. But it appears the Brentmeister General may have been on to something. A team of economists has now produced research that suggests there are clear links between workers' happiness and their productivity. The team, led by Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics at Warwick Business School and a leading authority on the relationship between economics and mental health, said its research has important implications for the worlds of politics and business. Click here for the full story >>

Shareholders fight back over executive pay and bonuses
Shareholders large and small are expected to deliver a bloody nose this week to four FTSE 100 companies — Marks & Spencer, Burberry, British Land and Sainsbury's — over controversial executive pay packages, underlining how out of step Britain's top boardrooms are with investor sentiment on the issue of blockbuster payouts. Pirc, the governance advisory group, has recommended members vote against executive remuneration packages at the companies, describing the deals as "excessive", setting "unchallenging performance targets", and "not being in the company's long-term interest". Click here for the full story >>

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