News round up: Thomas Cook, Ryanair, HSBC Holdings plc, Payment Protection Insurance, Impala Platinum, Lehman Brothers, British institutions, and Iceland.

Ryanair Holdings plc (NASDAQ:RYAAY) chief Michael O'Leary has had his knuckles rapped by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for the second time in less than a month for a publicity campaign that falsely implied Thomas Cook Group plc (LON:TCG) was on the brink of administration last year.

The reprimand is the 23rd handed out to the low-cost airline in just five years. Wednesday's ruling concerns "denigratory" adverts that appeared in a string of newspapers last November around the time of Thomas Cook's well publicised financial woes.

"We considered that the header 'Bye Bye Thomas Cook' pictured alongside the newspaper headlines would lead consumers to believe that Thomas Cook was likely to go into administration and that it was too risky to book with them," the ASA said. "As a result we concluded that the ads were misleading and denigratory."

In February, chief executive Mr O'Leary had his wrists slapped over "sexually suggestive" adverts featuring women in underwear to publicise the airline's 2012 cabin crew charity calendar, writes the Telegraph.

HSBC Holdings plc

HSBC has quietly revealed it paid the directors of its UK retail bank a total of 64% more in 2010 than it disclosed in its accounts at the time. The report and accounts for HSBC Bank published last week show that directors were paid £5.019m rather than the £3.076m disclosed in the 2010 accounts.

In a small footnote, the bank said it had "restated" the accounts to "reflect services rending during the year in respect of deferred awards". Experts said the restatement was the result of an accounting change – and is another example of the chaotic standards under which bank statements are produced, according to The Telegraph.

Payment Protection Insurance

Banks could end up paying an extra £6.4bn in controversial payment protection insurance payouts to millions of ‘forgotten victims’, new Money Mail research shows. The City watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, is ordering banks, insurers and brokers to write to 12million PPI customers who have yet to claim, telling them they may be due a payout.

Money Mail has seen insider industry calculations which show that, if just six in every ten people respond to the mailshot and are successful, it will take the expected total PPI compensation bill to £14bn. This would blow a huge hole in the banks’ own provisions for the mis-selling scandal, currently £7.6bn including administration costs, and force a major rethink on how they plan to compensate customers.

Impala Platinum

The glinting steel of the platinum smelting works soaring above the once-orderly grainfields of Selous comes as a shock. It was here, west of Harare, that white farmers were driven out by President Mugabe’s hired thugs a decade ago. From today, the Zimplats complex — the result so far of a $1.8bn (£1.1bn) investment by South Africa’s Impala Platinum through its 87% stake in the Zimbabwe-based company — is in serious danger of becoming another symbol of Mr Mugabe’s ruin, to set alongside the wasted farmland that surrounds it.

Impala has been given an ultimatum to hand over 29% of its Zimplats shareholding, worth $300m, into an as yet unformed trust. This is to make the world’s second-biggest platinum producer “compliant” with legislation forcing white and foreign-owned companies to “cede for value” 51% of ownership to black Zimbabweans, writes The Times.

Lehman Brothers

More than three years after its collapse sparked the worst of the financial crisis, Lehman Brothers yesterday emerged from bankruptcy. The investment bank will not return to making bets on the markets and advising on deals, but has instead started the long process of selling off its remaining assets and paying back creditors and investors. The first group of payments to creditors will take place on April 17 and is expected to be worth at least $10bn (£6.4bn). In total, $65bn will be paid back, The Times reports.

British institutions

Backing for British institutions such as the monarchy, the pound, and even the nationwide BBC Six O’Clock News has risen in Scotland at the same time as support has grown for a more powerful Scottish Parliament, a new poll reveals today.

In a graphic example of how voters appear to favour political change in Scotland, but cleave to a continuing union across Britain, the YouGov poll shows that backing for separate Scottish oversight in diplomacy, defence and immigration have all dropped over the past five years. At the same time, however, the poll shows that Scottish residents have warmed to the idea of the country running its own tax affairs under a system of “fiscal autonomy” that is now more popular than having public services funded by a Westminster grant, The Scotsman says.

Iceland

Senior members of Iceland's former government have accused the UK of making "unreasonable demands" in the run-up to the financial crisis that doomed attempts to rescue one of the country's biggest banks. On the second day of the trial of Geir Haarde, the country's prime minister during the country's banking collapse, Bjorgvin Sigurdsson, the country's former trade minister, was sharply critical of the stance taken by former Chancellor Alastair Darling and the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

"I do not know how in the world Darling thought that 300,000 people should take on hundreds of billions worth of debt," he told the court, The Telegraph reports.