Halliburton, the US contractor that worked for BP on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, has confessed to destroying evidence relating to the explosion in 2010, The Telegraph unveiled.

Sterling fell against the dollar and the euro yesterday as traders bet the Bank of England will take further action to propel the economy to ‘escape velocity’. The Canadian will use the August inflation report to outline how he plans to use ‘forward guidance’ to convince businesses and households that interest rates will stay low for some time to come.

Analysts also refuse to rule out more quantitative easing despite all nine members of the monetary policy committee voting against another round three weeks ago, The Daily Mail writes.

Chief executive of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, is leading an $8.2bn investor buyout of most of Vivendi’s controlling stake in the world’s largest video games company. Interestingly, the group behind Call of Duty and World of Warcraft will use about $1.2bn in cash but roughly $4.6bn of debt (a large amount of leverage) to buy 429m shares from Vivendi, according to The Financial Times.

Simon Litherland, the new chief executive of Britvic, has insisted that the soft drinks company could put its past problems behind it and deliver sustainable long-term growth for shareholders, The Times said.

A potential float of Britain’s largest mobile telecoms network has been delayed until next year to give it time to improve its financial performance.
Orange, previously known as France Télécom, said that a listing of EE, which would be the largest in the British telecoms industry since the demerger of O2 from BT more than a decade ago, would not now take place until next year, according to The Times.

The British engineering group Invensys said it remains in takeover talks with France’s Schneider Electric and has made a “solid start” to the financial year, The Independent revealed.