Sam Laidlaw, the chief executive officer of British Gas owner Centrica, has come under fire for the company’s £16.4m pay pot in 2012, in a year when customers faced a 6.0% gas price rise, reports The Guardian. Laidlaw himself, eared a basic salary of £950,000, but bonuses pushed his pay to almost £5.0m, the paper says.

According to The Times, banks have largely shrugged off the Bank of England’s warning of £50bn of potential losses over the next three years. The paper says that the Financial Policy Committee has identified a shortfall of £9.0bn at the top three domestic banks – RBS, Lloyds and Barclays – though these figures were not confirmed.

The Telegraph says that four of the UK’s largest train operators – Arriva, FirstGroup, National Express and Stagecoach – have dropped lawsuit worth £40m against the government to recover costs during the franchises process for Great Western that was scrapped earlier this year.

The Clair project could become the biggest oil field on the UK Continental Shelf, according to The Scotsman, as partners in the project begin drilling on the third phase of development. BP and partners are to invest more than £0.5bn in a two-year appraisal programme, the paper says.

Haruhiko Kuroda, the Governor of the Bank of Japan, has said that the nations’s growing debt is “not sustainable” and that a loss in confidence in the government’s finances could “have a very negative impact” on the economy, writes the Financial Times. Gross debt to gross domestic product is expected to rise to 245% this year, according to the IMF.

The owner of the London Eye, Legoland and Madame Tussauds and Thorpe Park, Merlin Entertainments, is considering a flotation on stock exchanges in New York and London, according to The Independent. The news comes as revenues broker through the £1.0bn barrier in 2012.

The Financial Times writes that US oil titan Chevron has announced it will cut pay for its senior executives by around 10% as a result of a series of high-profile safety failures.