Friday newspaper round-up: Greece debt doubts, cut-price steel, RBS, BT

LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - The European institutions overseeing Greece's bailout have expressed "serious concerns" over the sustainability of the country's debt, bringing them into line with the more pessimistic assessment of the International Monetary Fund. The European Commission and the European Central Bank argue in a new analysis that debt relief measures, including extending repayment periods, would allow Athens to achieve debt sustainability, a solution advocated by the IMF. They say such moves would avoid the need for a full-scale haircut. - The Financial Times Greece's parliament began debating a new €85bn rescue package early on Friday following hours of rancorous discussion over procedural issues and the last-minute inclusion of additional reforms requested by the country's creditors. A stormy nine-hour session on how the debate should be conducted laid bare a deepening feud between senior officials in the leftwing Syriza government and Zoi Konstantopoulou, the combative speaker of parliament, who is a vocal opponent of the bailout deal. - FT Royal Bank of Scotland (LSE: RBS.L - news) is to halve unauthorised overdraft fees for thousands of commercial customers as it attempts to clean up its reputation after accusations that it destroyed viable businesses. The cut in fees from next month is one of several changes by RBS which, with about 30% of the market, is Britain's largest business banker. The bank is also reducing fees for unpaid cheques and other penalties and lowering the maximum charge businesses can incur in a month. - The Times Chinese steelmakers are preparing to flood the global market with cut-price exports as they take advantage of this week's shock devaluation of the yuan, prompting furious protests from competitors in Europe and the US. It is the first warning sign of a deflationary wave of cheap products from China after the central bank (PBOC) abandoned its exchange rate regime, letting the currency fall in the steepest three-day drop since the country emerged as an economic powerhouse and sliding 3.3% against the dollar. - The Daily Telegraph BT has received a boost to its £12.5bn takeover of EE following a report on the deal by the communications regulator. Ofcom has advised competition watchdogs that most of the concerns raised by rivals over the deal do not merit intervention to curb the combined companies' power. Although Ofcom does not have the authority to approve the merger, its advice to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is likely to support BT's calls for it to be waved through. - The Telegraph The rush for airwaves needed to support Britain's love of smartphones has yielded a huge profit for Qualcomm (Hanover: QCI.HA - news) , the US chip maker, which has agreed to sell a large chunk of spectrum to Vodafone and Three to add to their data capacity in the future. The two networks have emerged victorious in a fierce auction of the Qualcomm spectrum - the frequencies used to carry mobile phone signals - with the total sum paid expected to exceed £100m, according to industry sources. Both EE and O2 were also interested in the Qualcomm asset but were beaten to the punch by their rivals, who need the extra capacity for 4G services to avoid a capacity crunch. - The Times The number of people being evicted by their landlords has risen sharply in the past four years, according to official statistics - a trend that housing charities blame on benefit cuts imposed by the previous coalition government. More than 43,000 households in rented housing in England and Wales were evicted by county court bailiffs in the 12 months to June, according to figures published by the Ministry of Justice on Thursday - a 50% increase in the past four years, and the highest level on record. Evictions by landlords began to rise after the coalition imposed cuts to housing benefit in 2011 as a way to rein in public spending. - FT Nomad , the investment vehicle which owns Birds Eye, is buying the European arm of Findus in a deal worth an estimated £500 million which will create a new frozen food giant. It will acquire Findus Group's businesses in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, France, Spain and Belgium, handing over £400 million and 8.4 million shares.

You can't buy charisma, or genius, but you can buy shares in Tesla . News (Other OTC: NWSAL - news) from the electric vehicle maker that its chief executive Elon Musk will buy $20m of stock in a new $500m offering to fund ambitious research spending drove Tesla shares up more than 2 per cent yesterday. Mr Musk plans to pour "staggering" amounts of money into research and development of new products at his Silicon Valley car company. Yesterday, the vehicle maker said the proceeds of the new share sale would be used to fund future projects, such as its mass market Model 3 vehicle and its battery "gigafactory", as well as its service centres and supercharger network. - The Times