Monday newspaper round-up: Housing, Primark, HSBC, Natural Gas

LONDON (ShareCast) - Ed Miliband will today intensify a political offensive over housing with an offer to exempt first-time buyers from up to £5,000 in stamp duty using cash raised from tax crackdowns on rogue landlords and foreign investors. The promise to waive the sales tax on properties worth up to £300,000 for those trying to get on the housing ladder comes as experts warned that Labour's pledge to cap rents in the private sector could leave tenants worse off and choke off housebuilding. - TheTimes The new boss of BHS has vowed to restore it to its historical place on the high street, targeting " Primark at one end and Marks & Spencer (Other OTC: MAKSF - news) at the other". In his first interview since the controversial sale of the retail chain this year, Darren Topp has outlined his plans to turn it around and defended the new owners. - TheTimes Nationalists sent to Westminster would use their election as MPs to agitate for a second referendum, private SNP documents and speeches made by candidates show. Nicola Sturgeon has said that next week's General Election is not a re-run of last year's referendum and that "something fairly substantial would have to change" before a second vote on leaving the UK could take place. - Scotsman HSBC may spin off its UK division into a separate business, reviving the old Midland Bank. The move could be considered as part of the far-reaching review by Britain's largest bank, announced on Friday, into whether to move its headquarters to Asia amid rising costs and increasingly onerous regulations in the UK. - The Times The United States is poised to flood world markets with once-unthinkable quantities of liquefied natural gas as soon as this year, profoundly changing the geo-politics of global energy and posing a major threat to Russian gas dominance in Europe. "We anticipate becoming big players, and I think we'll have a big impact," said the Ernest Moniz, the US Energy Secretary. "We're going to influence the whole global LNG market." - The Daily Telegraph Lloyds will this week take a £640m hit to profits from the sale of TSB to Spain's Banco Sabadell.The taxpayer-backed bank is due to recognise the loss at its first-quarter results, sending profits falling despite an improvement in underlying performance. Royal Bank of Scotland (LSE: RBS.L - news) is also likely to reveal falling profits as the heavy cost of shrinking its investment bank continue to weigh on its turnaround. - The Daily Telegraph