Britain '10% poorer' despite expected recession exit - papers

Britain's economy will take until 2012 to get back to where it was before the financial crisis, despite the end of Britain's worst recession since the 1930s, the CBI has warned.

Richard Lambert, director-general of the business group, said the country is now 10% poorer than it would have been if the recession had never happened, and the UK will have to "generate as much growth as possible" over the next five years, writes the Telegraph.

Without that growth, he warned in a speech last night, "the life chances of a generation of young people will be seriously impaired", standards of living will be compromised, and unemployment will not fall back to pre-crisis levels. Full story...

JIM O'NEILL, Goldman Sachs' star economist and a lifelong Manchester United fan, has declared his opposition to the club's recent bond issue - despite the investment bank making millions in fees from the fund raising.

Bill Shankly once declared his disappointment with those who argued that football was a matter of life and death: "I can assure you it is much, much more important than that".

Jim O'Neill, Goldman Sachs star economist, may not have gone quite that far, but the lifelong Manchester United fan has certainly put the beautiful game above mammon. Full story...

THE CHURCH of England has suffered a £40m loss on a disastrous investment in a New York apartment complex that was acquired by a consortium in 2006 for $5.4bn - the biggest single residential property deal in the United States.

A spokesman for the Church Commissioners said it had written off the entire value of its investment and added the commissioners were "looking carefully" at the lessons to be learnt.

"The investment was made in June 2007, which, with hindsight, was at the top of the property market and immediately before the credit crunch," the spokesman said. Full story...