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National Express’s biggest shareholder stepped up its bid to block the troubled bus and rail group’s £360m rescue rights issue by hovering up more shares. Spain’s Cosmen family, led by NatEx deputy chairman Jorge Cosmen, has spent about £4.4m in two share deals since last Friday raising their stake in the group from 18.5pc to around 19.5pc.
Sources close to the family said that they may continue buying stock ahead of a crucial shareholder vote to approve the cash call on Friday. The Cosmens are at loggerheads with the NatEx board over strategy and are opposed to the fundraising, which would help pay down its £1.1bn debt pile. NatEx needs more than 50pc of Friday’s vote to push the fundraising through.

Woolwoths went into administration with £385m of debt last year, at a cost of 27000 jobs. Now, it is in line for a return to the High Street.
Retail firm Shop Direct, which was once knew as Littlewoods, bought the brand name for 7m earlier this year and is now seeking franchisees to run up to 200 new stores. The group owned by the secretive Barclay brothers, is expected to compete with stores opened in the wake of Woolworths’ demise.

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One of the owld’s largest insurance brokers, Marsh & McLennan, is exploring a deal to buy part of HSBC’s insurance business.
MMC, which has a market capitalisation of almost $12bn and is listed in New York, is thought to be closing in on HSBC Insurance Brokers, which analysts have valued at between ￡150m and ￡200m.
HSBC Insurance Brokers is ranked as the UK’s ninth largest broker and has offices worldwide. The business finds insurance protection for commercial customers which it directs to underwriters in the Lloyd’s of London insurance market. Industry insiders say HSBC Insurance Brokers I no longer viewed as a core part of the bank’s strategy. They say that talks between the two parties are currently at an advanced stage and that the business represents a good fit for MMC’s broking business Marsh, which is keen to grow its global business.
Any deal would dilute HSBC’s involvement with insurance. The bank recently put its motor insurance business HSBC Insurance into run-off after failing to agree a deal to sell the division to Insurance Australian Group.
Earlier this month, Brian Duperreault, MMC chief executive, said the insurance broker sould announce several acquisiti9ons, including a couple by the end of December. After reporting the comopany’s third-quarter earnings, he said that the economic situation actually helps the company as it opens up more opportunities.

Creditors of Lehman Brothers have filed claims for the return of $824 billion and total claims may reach $1 trillion, the chief executive of the investment bank said.
Bryan Marsal, a restructuring expert who was installed as chief executive to run Lehman in administration, told a hearing in New York that some creditors’ claims were just flat-out silly.
Mr. Marsal said that the bank probably would call on a US bankruptcy judge to decide on claims that Lehman believes are overstated. Without mentioning names, Mr. Marsal told the court hearing that Lehman’s biggest and most sophisticated creditors were among those making inflated claims. Lehman’s largest creditors include JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Fannie Mae. Lehman Brothers International, the European division of the bank, is its largest creditor, with administrators claiming about $200 billion from the American parent.
Mr. Marsal said that Lehman aimed to have evaluated all claims by the end of the month and that it held $16 billion in cash.

The race is on to replace Marc Bolland, who is leaving Wm Morison to take Sir Stuart Rose’s place as chief executive of Marks & Spencer. A host of British retail’s leading lights, and some candidates from outside the sector, were mentioned in connection with the post.
Sir Ian Gibson, the chairman of Morrisons and the chairman of its nominations committee, is understood to be eager to bring the selection process to a close as quickly as possible. The upermarket has not appointed a headhunter but is likely to do so soon. Egon Zehnder, one of the world’s biggest executive search companies, recruited Mr Bolland from Heineken, the Dutch brewer, in 2006.
Shares in Morrisons lost 14.6p, or 4.9%, to 280.9p after the announcement of Mr Bolland’s departure. He will leave on January 31.

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