Lehmans secretly borrowed from Fed; Cowdery bets on diamonds

Thursday newspaper round-up: Lehman Brothers secretly borrowed billions of dollars from the US Federal Reserve months before the investment bank filed for bankruptcy, it has emerged.

The central bank lent Lehman up to $18bn (£11.2bn) as part of a formerly undisclosed lending programme that specialised in month-long loans to banks and other financial institutions.

The disclosure of which banks tapped the programme, known as the single-tranche open-market operations, follows a request made by Bloomberg News under the Freedom of Information Act. MORE...

Clive Cowdery, the Resolution founder who made about $240m buying and selling insurers, is betting on diamonds after prices rose five times faster than gold this year on surging demand from China and India. MORE...

Rupert Murdoch's planned takeover of Britain's biggest commercial broadcaster was cast into doubt last night as his newspaper empire faced fresh allegations that it hacked the families of dead British servicemen and a dozen blue-chip companies withdrew advertising from its best-selling paper. MORE...