City bankers set for £7bn spring bonuses - papers

City bankers are on course to receive nearly £7bn in bonuses this spring even though the government has been forced to pump tens of billions into the banks to prevent them collapsing, according to The Guardian ..

Analysis of preliminary pay data from the Office for National Statistics shows that in the first three months of the bonus season to February the financial sector has shared out £5bn in bonuses, half the level of the same period last year.

Extrapolating that to the full five months of the bonus season to April means payouts will be between £6.5bn and £7bn, compared with £13.7bn last year. Full story...

A rebound in consumer spending combined with the aggressive actions of business owners to position the US economy for a return to growth later this year, economists concluded yesterday, even as GDP shrank more than expected in the first three months of 2009, reports The Independent.

US economic output contracted at an annualised rate of 6.1 per cent in the first quarter, almost as bad as the minus 6.3 per cent GDP figure for the final three months of last year, when consumers and businesses were reeling from the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Business investment contracted by a record 37.9 per cent, as firms scrapped expansion plans and axed jobs, pulling down overall output. GDP was also hit by a record $103.7bn (£70.2bn) reduction in inventories, or stockpiles of unsold goods - and while that accounted for 2.8 percentage points of the decline, it was hailed as good news by many economists. Full story...

The embattled boss of Société Générale finally fell on his sword yesterday after months of blunt hints from France's President Nicolas Sarkozy that he should resign. Daniel Bouton, 59, said he would leave his job as president next week, says The Independent.

M. Bouton, who headed SocGen for 12 years, has been struggling to survive since January last year when it emerged that a junior trader, Jérome Kerviel, had lost €4.9bn (£4.4bn) on unauthorised trades. Earlier this week, a French newspaper, Libération, claimed that SocGen had lost another €5bn in unwise trading by a subsidiary. The bank dismissed the report as "false". Full story...