EU proposals rattle UK private equity - papers

UK private equity companies reacted angrily last night after a European parliamentary committee proposed widening the scope of a controversial directive for alternative fund managers.

The British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA) said that tighter disclosure requirements for venture capitalists proposed by the EU Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs "worsens a deeply defective directive" says The Times.

It said that a plan to abandon thresholds that would have excluded smaller venture capitalists from new rules, known as the Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFM) directive, would cost small operators in the UK a prohibitive £30,000 a year. It also said that it would limit access to capital for small businesses and damage the UK economy. See story...

Shanghai stocks have done very well, copper has soared and property has been blazing. Not one of those assets, though, can match the roaring returns on a kilogram of Chinese garlic reports The Times.

In the garlic-producing heartland of Jinxiang, wholesale market prices of the pungent clove - caught in a tornado of easy liquidity and artificial market forces - have been whisked into the stratosphere. Average prices, according to a report from the Ministry of Commerce, have hit 6.14 yuan (54p) a kilogram, having surged 286% since March. See story...

Lloyds Banking Group will today ask 2.8 million private shareholders to back its £13.5bn fundraising, the biggest cash call in UK history according to The Guardian.

But the shareholder vote comes amid reignited concerns over Lloyds's rescue takeover of Halifax Bank of Scotland last year after details of a £25.4bn Bank of England loan to HBOS were disclosed this week.

One MP yesterday said Lloyds workers and investors had been "mugged" over the Bank of England decision to conceal the emergency loan, which was made last autumn when shareholders were being asked to vote on the HBOS deal. See story...