News round up: HSBC, Lloyds, Barclays, RBS, Melrose, Charter, T-Mobile USA, AT&T, IMF, ECB and growth downgrade.

On Wednesday night HSBC Holdings plc (LON:HSBA) missed the deadline imposed by the Financial Services Authority in regards to PPI – widely mis-sold insurance that is designed to cover loan repayments if a borrower falls ill or loses their job.

HSBC has a relatively small PPI liability – about £270m compared with £3.2bn at Lloyds Banking Group plc (LON:LLOY), £1bn at Barclays plc (LON:BARC) and £850m at Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc (LON:RBS).

The bank said it had told customers whether their claim had been successful but had not yet informed them all of the actual amount they would receive. It expects to have done so by the end of this week.

Banks paid out £215m in compensation in the first half of the year and have been working through a vast backlog of complaints in recent months. They were given until Wednesday evening to process claims that had been put on hold pending a legal challenge to new PPI rules, writes the Financial Times.

UK banks set to escape major restructuring

Britain’s biggest banks are set to escape any major restructuring until after the planned 2015 general election, amid a political consensus that they should focus on business lending to sustain the faltering economy.

Vince Cable, the cabinet’s most vocal bank critic, has accepted it may be impossible to implement extensive banking reforms before the election, according to government officials, although the legal framework for the changes would be put in place before the poll, reports the Financial Times.

Melrose sweetens bid for Charter

Melrose has sweetened its bid for Charter by around £40m, bringing it close to landing the £1.44bn takeover of the UK engineering group. The two sides have been locked in talks over the past week, with Melrose's decision to raise its 840p-a-share indicative offer by about 20p looking enough to convince the Charter board to agree the deal, the Telegraph writes.

T-Mobile USA and AT&T merger blocked

US competition authorities moved last night to block a merger of two of the four largest mobile-phone operators in the country, saying the deal could raise prices and reduce services. The Obama administration sued to scupper the $39bn (£24bn) acquisition of T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom by AT&T, announced in March, sending shares in both AT&T and Deutsche Telekom down by about 5 per cent, according to the Independent.

IMF staff clash with ECB colleagues

Staff at the International Monetary Fund have clashed with colleagues at the European Central Bank over calculations said to paint an unfairly poor picture of eurozone banks’ balance sheets, according to reports. The figures, included in a draft of the forthcoming Global Financial Stability Report, present an analysis of eurozone banks’ debts that eurozone officials have rejected as biased and incomplete, writes the Times.

Growth downgraded to 1.1%

Business leaders on Thursday warned the economy was in a more fragile state than a few months ago after downgrading growth for this year to 1.1%. The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said its previous estimate of 1.3% was overly optimistic, after a series of business surveys showed that the economy was slowing to a crawl, the Guardian writes.