Papers

The former chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Tom McKillop, and other former board directors could face legal action for agreeing a £16m "golden parachute" pension for Sir Fred Goodwin, reports The Guardian .

Allen Stanford, the flamboyant Texan billionaire and cricket impresario who sponsored a $1 million-a-man match in the West Indies, was charged in the US yesterday in connection with an alleged $9.2bn (£6.4bn) investment fraud, The Times reports.

Executives and staff of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the chief City regulator, are in line for up to £33 million of bonuses and pay top-ups this year, The Times reports.

Banks dependent on taxpayer support are planning to rush out hundreds of millions of pounds in bonuses to senior bankers and traders before a threatened crackdown, The Times reports.

The arctic weather that struck Britain yesterday could cost the UK economy about £1.2bn, piling further difficulty on firms already struggling in the recession, the Guardian reports. The Federation of Small Businesses estimated that one in five commuters...

The FSA should crack down on the "money for nothing" culture of financial advisers who receive ongoing commissions on with-profits investments, according to Which?, the consumer organisation.

White powder in about a dozen envelopes sent to Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones executives turned out to be harmless, the New York Police Department said on Wednesday, The Guardian reports.

Regulatory authorities in India have ordered an inquiry into PriceWaterhouseCoopers' auditing of Satyam, the company at the heart of the country's biggest ever alleged fraud, which commentators are calling India's Enron, reports The Telegraph.

The European Central Bank has deemed Britain unfit for monetary union even if it wants to join following the dramatic slide in sterling and the explosion in the UK budget deficit, reports The Telegraph.

Ten days before his arrest, Bernard Madoff received $250m from a man who helped give him his start on Wall Street, a move that shows how the investment manager tried to raise cash to stave off his firm's collapse, The Wall Street Journal reports.