Welcome to today's round-up of business news from The Times: what we're saying, what they're saying

Top stories

The Times: Victims of Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50 billion scam believed they had invested their money with an ordinary bank.

Daily Telegraph: Lenders to Woolworths are in line to collect millions of pounds in controversial fees following the collapse of the retail chain.

Financial Times: Leading companies are being probed by the financial watchdog over possible failures to disclose key trading data to the stock market.

Comment

Gary Duncan in The Times: Most pundits predict the recession will be over not just by next Christmas, but well before it . They are kidding themselves.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Daily Telegraph: Asia needs to fully wake up to the scale of the West's economic crisis.

Stephen King in The Independent: As a major trading nation, the UK is hugely exposed to bad news coming from elsewhere in 2009.

Upside

The Times: The Bank of England is on Thursday expected to cut interest rates by 50 or 100 basis points to a low never reached before in its 314-year history.

Daily Telegraph: Low oil prices could boost Britain’s economic growth by as much as 1.2 per cent in the next two years.

The Independent: A change in guidelines by the Association of British Insurers could encourage British companies to raise cash through rights issues.

Downside

The Times: LyondellBasell, the chemicals group owned by Russian-born oligarch Len Blavatnik, hired a restructuring expert in a bid to stave off bankruptcy.

The Times: Falling oil prices have caused more than US$60 billion (£41 billion) worth of projects to extract oil from sand in Canada to be delayed .

The Times: Blooming Marvellous, the maternity-wear chain, is on the brink of administration and Mosaic, the fashion retailer, is in talks with its lenders.

Mergers and shakers

The Times: Punch Taverns, the pub group, began the sale process for 500 of its leased pubs by offering their existing lessees first refusal on the properties.

New York Times: Hollywood’s Universal Pictures sold Rogue Pictures , which makes lower-cost films, to Relativity Media for $150 million (£100 million).

The Times: The Priory, the acute care specialist, is encouraging a £2 billion ($2.9 billion) merger with Four Seasons, the care-homes group.

Around Asia

The Times: Sony, the embattled Japanese electronics group, is set for a program of job cuts and sweeping changes to management and manufacturing processes.

Daily Telegraph: Nakheel, the company behind some of Dubai's best-known landmarks, is considering a stock market listing to raise $15 billion (£10.3 billion).

Financial Times: The stock market slump has driven Japanese companies to buy back their own shares in near-record numbers.

Look ahead

The Times: A review of business by the new boss of National Australia Bank could see it put Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks up for sale .

Daily Telegraph: Fears are growing that Marks & Spencer will be forced to cut its dividend next year amid dire trading.

Financial Times: Cognita, Britain’s biggest schools company, plans to double its number of schools to 100 within the next four years.

MARKETS

FTSE 100 4,561.79 up 2.9% (Friday close)

Dow 9,034.69 up 2.9% (Friday close)

S&P 500 931.80 up 3.2% (close)

Nasdaq 1,632.21 up 3.5% (close)

Nikkei 9,057.57 up 2.2% (latest)

Hang Seng 15,304.70 up 1.7% (latest)

Currencies

Sterling $1.4478/1.0389 euros (latest)

Euro $1.3936 (latest)

Commodities

Brent crude $47.93 up $1.20 (latest)

West Texas crude $47.46 up $1.12 (latest)

Gold $880.80 up $1.30 (latest)

New York

Reuters: US stocks started the new year higher on Friday as investors looked beyond another piece of grim economic data and hoped that an economic recovery was on the horizon. Energy companies gained from higher oil prices. Chevron rose 2.2 per cent and Exxon Mobil rose 1.1 per cent. On the Nasdaq, iPod maker Apple rose 4.9 per cent and Microsoft rose 3 per cent. Among industrial stocks, Textron rose 9.8 per cent and Manitowoc rose 9.6 per cent. The first payments were made on the auto bailout to General Motors. GM rose 14 per cent and Ford rose 4.4 per cent.

Asia

Bloomberg: Asian stocks rose in early trade for the eighth successive day, pushing the regional benchmark to its longest gain since 2004. Komatsu, the world’s second-largest maker of construction machinery, rose 6.7 per cent in Japan. Posco, Asia’s third-largest steelmaker, rose 2.3 per cent in South Korea. Rio Tinto Group, the world’s No.3 mining company, rose 8.4 per cent on higher metal prices. Mizuho Financial Group, Japan’s third-biggest bank, and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, the No.2, both rose 11 per cent. Woori Finance Holdings, which controls South Korea’s second-biggest bank, rose 9.1 per cent and Hana Financial Group, which controls the fourth-biggest bank, rose 6 per cent. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 1.3 per cent to 91.33 in morning trade.

Michael Beh

michaelwbeh@gmail.com

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