Samsung Boss Wins Sibling Inheritance Battle

The boss of Samsung has won a bitter battle with his siblings over inheritance of South Korea's tech giant.

Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Kun-Hee won a court ruling on Friday against demands from his siblings to hand over billions of dollars in shares in various companies in the group.

The court allowed Mr Lee to retain all his shareholdings in the massive conglomerate.

Members of his family had accused him of hiding shares from them following the death of Mr Lee's father and Samsung founder Lee Byung-Chul.

If the court had found against Mr Lee, 71, it would have forced a restructuring of the complex web of shareholdings across the group's entities and weakened his hold on the giant conglomerate.

The high-stakes fight highlighted deep discord between sons of the founder, who denounced each other in public as the battle unfolded last year.

It brought longstanding family resentments into the open, highlighting the struggles for control that can happen at the heart of South Korea's chaebol - the name for family-owned conglomerates that dominate the country's economy.

The main claimants in court were Mr Lee's brother, Maeng-Hee, his sister Suk-Hee and the children of another brother.

Mr Lee called his older brother "greedy" while Mr Maeng-hee described Mr Lee as "acting childish".

They said that after their father's death in 1987, Mr Lee had taken over shares worth around £2.5bn in Samsung Electronics and Samsung Life Insurance that had been held under the names of other people, including Samsung executives.

Samsung is a leading South Korean firm and at the forefront of commercial rivalry against America's tech leader Apple.

The vast business empire spans many industries including finance, chemicals and consumer electronics.

It is the world's largest maker of smartphones but has been locked in patent wars around the world with Apple over various products.

Judges on two continents have even urged to warring tech firms to resolve their bitter battles.

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HMV Staff Use Twitter To Reveal Redundancies

HMV staff have used the company's Twitter account to reveal workers at the head office and other non-shop employees are being fired.

The staff used the social media service to inform followers that 190 people were being made redundant.

One staff member tweeted: "We're tweeting live from HR where we're all being fired! Exciting!"

The worker, who was apparently using an iPhone, added: "There are over 60 of us being fired at once! Mass execution, of loyal employees who love the brand.

"Sorry we've been quiet for so long. Under contract, we've been unable to say a word, or - more importantly - tell the truth."

The joint administrators from Deloitte later confirmed the 190 redundancies, most at HMV's office in Eastcastle Street, London, with others in its Marlow head office, a site in Solihull and distribution centres in Canning Town, London, and Birmingham.

Administrator Nick Edwards said: "Since our appointment as administrators over two weeks ago, we have been assessing the financial position of HMV.

"Following this review, a number of redundancies at the head office and distribution centres have been made.

"Although such decisions are always difficult, it is a necessary step in restructuring the business to enhance the prospects of securing its future as a going concern."

It was later reported that one of those made redundant, HMV's social media planner Poppy Rose Cleere, claimed responsibility for the tweets.

Around 4,000 people work at HMV

HMV called in administrators in early January after suffering dismal Christmas sales, which put more than 4,000 jobs at risk at its 223 stores.

It was one of three well-known high street firms that called in administrators in the New Year as Britain's high streets struggled against online sales.

Shortly after taking charge the administrators said the chain would no longer honour gift vouchers and cards, but after a storm of protest from consumers, they said gift cards and vouchers could be redeemed in stores from Tuesday.

Retail restructuring group Hilco UK has acquired HMV's debt, effectively giving it control of the administrator-managed entertainment chain.

The debt purchase has been taken from the books of the struggling retail chain's lenders, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds.

HMV's net debt last October stood at £176m but it struggled to find a niche that would give it an advantage over online retail alternatives.

Administrator Mr Edwards added: "We have been very pleased with the level of interest in the business as a going concern, whilst the response from customers has demonstrated the demand to see HMV remain on the high street.

"Equally, the support received from suppliers has been very positive and has enabled us to continue trading during the administration.

"As a result of all of these factors, I remain hopeful we will be able to secure a future for a restructured business."

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Horse DNA: Burger King Dumps Irish Supplier

Burger King has issued full page newspaper apologies after discovering horse DNA in beefburgers from its supplier in Ireland.

The fast food chain said sorry to customers as it confirmed it was cutting ties with Silvercrest, the food processing plant that supplied contaminated burgers to UK supermarkets.

Burger King said its own tests for equine DNA in its burgers had come back negative and that four samples from the Silvercrest plant that did test positive were from a product that did not make it into restaurants.

The Miami-based chain said the failure to deliver 100% British and Irish beef patties was a violation of contracts.

The UK newspaper ads include a statement from Diego Beamonte, Burger King Corporation's vice president for global quality, who said: "While the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has stated that this is not a food safety issue, we are deeply troubled by the findings of our investigation and apologise to our guests, who trust us to source only the highest quality 100% beef burgers.

"Our supplier has failed us and in turn we have failed you. We are committed to ensuring that this does not happen again."

The Irish authorities said that their investigations had traced filler product used in the burger processing facility to a supplier in Poland.

It contained a mixture of beef and horse off-cuts.

Experts from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) yesterday told the Commons Environment Committee that they could not be sure whether the contaminated burgers were being sold for more than a year.

Aldi is the latest supermarket to suspend supplies over burger content

Bosses at the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI), who identified and publicised the controversy, and Department of Agriculture chiefs have yet to be questioned at a similar level in Dublin.

At least 10 million burgers were put into storage following the scandal. Silvercrest's parent company ABP Food Group initially said they would be destroyed.

Silvercrest had a contract to supply Burger King in the UK, Ireland and Denmark. It is understood the deals with the fast food chain and Tesco were worth in the region of £39m.

The Ballybay processing factory, closed since the scandal broke two weeks ago, employed 112 people.

Burger King said it had carried out its own internal investigation including scientific tests, inspection of the Silvercrest facility and scrutiny of traceability records over the last fortnight.

It has been using approved suppliers from Germany and Italy as a precaution since.

Burger King's apology came after Aldi suspended its contract with beefburger supplier Dalepak, having found small traces of horsemeat DNA in its products.

The supermarket withdrew three beefburger lines earlier this month after traces of pig meat and horsemeat were discovered, and launched an investigation.

"Aldi UK's customers are our absolute priority," a spokesman said. "This is why we immediately withdrew these products until such a time that we could verify that there was no risk to our customers.

"We are deeply angry and feel let down by our supplier and we are pursuing more tests until we are certain that we understand how the production line was contaminated."

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FTSE 100 Has Best January Rise Since 1989

The FTSE 100 has had its strongest January for 24 years, with more than 6% of value added to Britain's top firms.

The UK's blue chip companies have grown £96bn in the first month of trading - climbing at more than £3bn per day on the index.

The growth of 6.4% is the best year start since 1989.

Equity trading reached the 6,000 mark on the first market day of 2013, and peaked above 6,300.

The last time the index had climbed so high was in 2008 before the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

The rally in markets has also been felt further abroad, with Tokyo's Nikkei index rising 7.2% and the Dow up 6% in the same period.

The encouraging climb in the FTSE 100 comes amid official figures which showed the UK economy contracted 0.3% in the last quarter.

Last week the US also revealed that its economy had shrunk by 0.1% ahead of it resolving the so-called fiscal cliff.

The FTSE 100 climb in 2013 comes after the premier UK stock listing rose by 5.8% in 2012.

Equities have become an increasingly attractive investment option for people during the period of historic low interest rates.

Bonds had become a haven for cautious investors since the global financial crisis more than four years ago.

"Optimism about economic prospects, record levels of company profits and hopes that the eurozone crisis is past mean investors are feeling happier about taking a punt on shares, at the expense of currencies and bonds," Sky News Business Presenter Dharshini David said.

"But with almost £100bn added to the value of FTSE 100 in January alone, markets may have gone too far, too fast and there's a risk that the thirst for equities may not last."

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Barclays Boss Drops Bonus To 'Avoid Debate'

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

The new chief executive of Barclays is to waive his annual bonus amid continuing pressure on the bank over its involvement in a series of scandals.

Antony Jenkins, who took over from Bob Diamond in August, said he had decided this week not to take a bonus for 2012, about which leading shareholders had been canvassed by the man in charge of setting boardroom pay at the bank.

Mr Jenkins informed the board of his decision on Tuesday, hours after Sky News had revealed the talks between Sir John Sunderland, Barclays' remuneration committee chairman, and the bank's biggest institutional investors.

In a statement issued on Friday morning, Mr Jenkins said: "I am aware of considerable speculation about, and public interest in, the question of whether I will be awarded a bonus in respect of my performance in 2012.

"To avoid further unnecessary public debate on this matter, I wish to make clear that I concluded early this week that I do not wish to be considered for a bonus award for 2012 and I have communicated that decision to the Board.

"The year just past was clearly a very difficult one for Barclays and its stakeholders, with multiple issues of our own making besetting the bank.

"I think it only right that I bear an appropriate degree of accountability for those matters and I have concluded that it would be wrong for me to receive a bonus for 2012 given those circumstances."

Investors welcomed Mr Jenkins' decision but questioned why it had taken the disclosure of Sir John's meeting to prompt him to make the decision given that Barclays has in the last year set aside the best part of £2bn for Libor-rigging fines and compensating customers for mis-selling payment protection insurance policies and interest rate hedging products.

During their meeting earlier this month, Sir John told shareholders that the Barclays board wanted to pay Mr Jenkins a "significant" bonus.

Sky News reported on Tuesday that it was unclear whether Mr Jenkins would accept a bonus award. His decision not to will put pressure on the chief executives of HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group to follow suit after both banks were also forced to set aside significant sums because of various industry scandals.

Stephen Hester, the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, said last year that he would not accept a bonus for 2012.

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Taxi! Chinese Firm Saves British Icon

A Chinese company has rescued the maker of Britain's iconic black taxi and intends to sell them around the world.

Privately-owned Chinese carmaker Geely has bought Coventry-based Manganese Bronze in a deal worth £11m.

Geely previously owned a 20% stake in the firm before it collapsed into administration last October.

More than 100 jobs have been saved after Manganese Bronze was brought out of administration by the Chinese firm.

Manganese Bronze nearly crashed after it was forced to recall 500 black cabs due to a steering box fault. This came on top of mounting losses at the group.

Geely pledged to retain the group's 107 staff and existing manufacturing site in Coventry.

But 156 jobs have already been axed since Manganese called in administrators.

A security guard at the gates of the manufacturer in Coventry

Zhejiang Geely Holding Group chairman Li Shufu said the firm has ambitious plans for the business.

Geely said it was confident of being able to create new jobs and plans new taxi models with improved energy efficiency, while it is also looking at launching into the private hire market.

"Despite its recent difficulties, we have long believed that the company and the 'black cab' have huge potential," Mr Li added.

Its London Taxi arm was already suffering amid a consumer spending slowdown and increased rivalry from competitors, such as Eco City vehicles, and Manganese had been loss-making for the past four years.

The group's London Taxi Company division makes about 2,700 cabs a year and has produced more than 100,000 since it started in 1948. Its newest model, the TX4, was launched in October 2006.

While the holding company will be known as Geely UK, the new owner said it will retain the London Taxi International brand.

The London icon is used in many towns across the UK

Manganese Bronze can trace its roots back to the 19th century as a maker of ship propellers and was named after the metal used.

The deal was welcomed by Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London.

He said: "I am delighted that Geely has successfully secured the future of the London Taxi Company, ensuring the continuing manufacture of a world famous, fully accessible and instantly recognisable vehicle synonymous with London."

Business Secretary Vince Cable added: "It's only right that the iconic black cabs will be produced in the UK.

"I'm pleased that workers in the Coventry factory will keep their jobs, thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make this happen."

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City Figures To Back New Tamara Mellon Brand

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

Tamara Mellon, the businesswoman who built Jimmy Choo into a globally-prominent fashion brand, is plotting a $25m comeback that will see her name adorning stores in leading cities around the world.

Sky News can exclusively reveal that Ms Mellon has lined up figures including Michael Spencer, the boss of broking firm Icap and former Conservative Party treasurer, and Tommy Hilfiger, the tycoon behind the eponymous fashion business, as investors in her new business.

Expected to be called Tamara Mellon, her lifestyle business will mark an ambitious return to the business world 15 months after she left Jimmy Choo. A non-compete agreement signed when she departed expires this month.

Ms Mellon has set her sights on securing the funds in the hope of replicating her success at the maker of upmarket women's footwear.

Her other backers will include David Ross, co-founder of The Carphone Warehouse, Lord Marland, who recently stepped down as a trade minister in the Coalition government, and Tory Burch, the fashion entrepreneur who is a close friend of Ms Mellon's.

People close to the fundraising said that Ms Mellon was keen to secure a significant amount of British investment for her new venture.

Although she now lives in the US, Ms Mellon is a British citizen and remains a Business Ambassador for the Government, which involved promoting British trade on overseas visits. She also sits on the board of Revlon, the global cosmetics group.

WH Ireland, the City broking firm, is believed to have been assembling the fundraising for Ms Mellon, which is at an advanced stage.

The new venture is understood to include plans for flagship stores selling a wide range of upmarket fashion and other products in London, Los Angeles and New York, with further openings likely as the business expands.

City sources said the fundraising deal could be announced within the next few weeks.

Ms Mellon's track record is impressive, having walked away from Jimmy Choo with an £85m fortune following its sale to Labelux, the Swiss-based fashion label collection, in 2011.

In an interview with The Sunday Times last year, Ms Mellon was candid about leaving the company she had founded and worked for since 1996.

"I didn't like the equity plan that had been put in place. The management team were asked to invest their own money in the business and hold their shares for seven years, which would then be subject to income tax and not come under capital gains. I felt it was unfair," she told the newspaper.

Ms Mellon began her fashion career from the modest foundation of a stall on Portobello Road in London, where she sold T-shirts. She later worked at the UK edition of Vogue magazine, where she met Jimmy Choo, a Malaysian-born Hackney cobbler. She went into business with him, launching a store in Knightsbridge.

The company was a huge success, making big returns for a succession of private equity-owners, although Ms Mellon has since been critical of the buyout industry, telling another newspaper last year:

"What happens in private equity is they come in and they say we're going to be a great partner. We want to hold this long term and we're going to help you nurture and build this brand, [but] the day after signing, they talked about selling the business."

A spokesman for Ms Mellon declined to comment.

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Red Tape 'Strangling Youth Jobs Drive'

Attempts to get more than a million young people into work are being hampered by excessive bureaucracy and central government control, council leaders have claimed.

The Local Government Association (LGA) says a new, more local approach to tackling youth unemployment could reduce the number of young jobless people by a fifth.

In a report it complains of an "overly complicated" system of tackling youth unemployment, with 33 different national schemes covering 13 different age boundaries and costing £15bn a year.

The report says more than 94,000 people completed hair and beauty courses last year, even though there were only 18,000 new jobs in the sector.

By contrast, just 123,000 people were trained for around 275,000 advertised jobs in construction - more than two vacancies for every qualified person, said the LGA.

Young people at a jobs fair

David Simmonds of the LGA, said: "Youth unemployment is a worrying trend for us all, particularly long-term youth unemployment which has doubled since 2008 and continues to grow.

"All the evidence in this report points to the success that local organisations, such as councils, businesses and education providers, can achieve when working together... but this is being hampered by successive centrally-driven government approaches."

He added: "Councils are in a unique position and can play a pivotal role in identifying young people that are likely to slip into periods of long-term unemployment.

"But we need to be given the powers to prevent this happening and help equip future jobseekers with the skills, confidence and real-life experience they need to find work in their area."

The LGA said councils should be the main commissioners of employment programmes aimed at young people, not central government.

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Twitter Hacked: Up To 250,000 Passwords Taken

Around 250,000 Twitter users may have had their accounts compromised by computer hackers.

The social networking site said usernames, email addresses and encrypted passwords may have been taken during an "extremely sophisticated" attack on its systems.

It said one attack was shut down moments after it was detected, adding that the passwords of users who may have been affected had been reset.

In a blog, Bob Lord, director of information security at Twitter, said there had been "a recent uptick in large-scale security attacks aimed at US technology and media companies", with the New York Times among those targeted.

He said: "Our investigation has indicated the attackers may have had access to limited user information - usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passwords - for approximately 250,000 users.

"As a precautionary security measure, we have reset passwords and revoked session tokens for these accounts.

"This attack was not the work of amateurs and we do not believe it was an isolated incident.

"The attackers were extremely sophisticated and we believe other companies and organisations have also been recently similarly attacked."

One expert said the hackers may have gained access through an employee's home or work computer by exploiting vulnerabilities in Java, a widely-used computing language.

Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy and security researcher, said such a move would give attackers "a toehold" in Twitter's internal network, potentially allowing them to track user information as it travelled across the company's systems or break into specific areas, such as the authentication servers that process users' passwords.

Although the hackers are unlikely to have gained any confidential information, Mr Soltani said the stolen credentials could be used to access other services for which a person has signed up using the same username and password.

Mr Lord said that although "only a very small percentage" of users were potentially affected, everyone who uses the site should ensure their password is secure.

He said passwords should be at least 10 characters long, contain upper and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols, and be different to passwords used for other online accounts.

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RBS Told To Pay Libor Fine From Bonus Pot

Chancellor George Osborne wants any fine paid by the Royal Bank of Scotland over the Libor scandal to come out of its bankers' bonuses.

RBS, which is majority-owned by the taxpayer, is expected to agree a fine of £400-500m next week with US and British authorities.

It is accused of attempting to rig benchmark interest rates.

Sky's City Editor Mark Kleinman said: "A Treasury source has told Sky News that the money that the US regulators will fine RBS will have to come out of the bank's bonus pot.

Sky's Mark Kleinman said the demand is politically important

"It's very important politically, I think, for the Chancellor to be able to say that the taxpayer is not bearing the financial cost of misconduct by bankers who work for a company that is majority-owned by the taxpayer.

"The Treasury is obviously playing hardball on this, and we'll find out exactly how much RBS is going to be paying in fines in the coming days."

The Treasury expects the fines to be paid not just from the bonus pot for 2012 - likely to be around £250m - but money from future years' bonus pots as well.

RBS - which is 81% owned by taxpayers - is also looking to claw back up to £100m from pay deals previously awarded to executives in its investment bank.

The bank's remuneration committee, which is chaired by Penny Hughes, a non-executive director, is assessing plans for a "flat tax" on the pay packets of hundreds of directors and managing directors in its markets business.

The idea would involve about 15% of prior-year pay awards to the relevant individuals being clawed back, netting a total of as much as £100m.

"George Osborne is sending out a clear signal: 'You're paying for this, not us'," said Sky's Glen Oglaza.

"What the Treasury are saying is there won't be bonuses paid this year, but actually your bonuses are going to be clawed back not just this year but probably next year and the year after as well."

Barclays was fined £300m last year for its role in the scandal.

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