News round up: Clinton Cards plc, London Stock Exchange Group plc, Barclays plc, Microsoft Corp, Property prices.

The last remaining Clinton Cards plc (LON:CC) shops run by administrators will shut at the end of the month with the loss of 550 jobs. Administrators admitted there had been no interest in the remaining sites, which means the retailer has made nearly 4,000 staff unemployed since May with the closure of 370 shops.

Around 4,500 jobs have been saved with the sale of 397 shops to Lakeshore, a subsidiary of American Greetings – the supplier which called in the £35m of debts from Clinton Cards that led to its collapse. Administrators Zolfo Cooper announced on Thursday that 76 further shops would be shut on 31 July including several London shops and its flagship Edinburgh store.

American Greetings forced the listed company, which had been the biggest card retailer in the country, into administration by buying up the £35m debts from lenders Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays. It then announced its intentions to make Clintons insolvent and take over its most profitable sites, writes the Guardian.

London Stock Exchange Group plc

The London Stock Exchange Group is in talks with the owner of the Singapore exchange about a potential 7.2bn pound merger. The British bourse, which pulled out of a 4.2bn pound merger with the owner of the Toronto stock exchange last year, is understood to have held a series of informal conversations with Singapore Exchange, its Asian rival, about a formal tie-up.

Although still in their preliminary stages, the talks are believed to have focused on the benefits of merging the two exchanges amid continued consolidation attempts in the sector. If the London-Singapore deal were to come to fruition, it is expected the combined exchange group would rank third in the world in terms of trades, behind NYSE Euronext and Nasdaq OMX, The Telegraph reports.

Barclays plc

Philippe Moryoussef, the former Barclays trader identified as being at the heart of the interest rate fixing scandal, had bets in the order of €30bn resting on the rate of Euribor (the European equivalent of the UK's Libor) and appears to have been a domineering character over dealers at other banks.

The multi-millionaire was revealed yesterday as being the character named "Trader E" in the explosive Financial Services Authority report into the Libor fixing scandal, where he is repeatedly mentioned among those who fixed the price of Libor up or down in order to boost the profits on their trades. In one example from 2007, the report describes how Moryous-sef appeared to hatch a plan to fix the Euribor "cash" rate so a trade linked to its level on a set date would make a bigger profit, writes The Independent.

Microsoft Corp

Microsoft suffered one of the biggest blows to its reputation last night as the software giant reported its first loss as a public company. The company founded by Bill Gates said that it had lost $492m (£313m) in the three months to the end of June after writing off $6.2bn from acquisitions made in an attempt to keep up with Google in the search engine market. While Microsoft was eating humble pie, Google was emphasising just how badly its rival had faltered as it reported an 11% rise in second-quarter profits to $2.7bn.

Revenues rose by 35% to $12.2bn compared with the same quarter last year, including a $1.2bn contribution from its acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Microsoft’s results were affected by weak sales of personal computers after consumers and companies put off purchases because of the economic uncertainty. This dented revenues for the company’s core software range and the Windows division reported sales down 13% to $4.1bn, The Times explains.

Property prices

More UK homeowners expect property prices to rise rather than fall in the coming year, two separate studies have found, despite house sales stuttering and the dour economic outlook. According to the latest quarterly Halifax Housing Market Confidence tracker, 34% of householders thought the average UK house price would rise over the next year, with 19% predicting a drop. In a separate property market sentiment report by property website Zoopla, 63% expected values to rise in the next six months, with 18% predicting falls in the same period, The Daily Mail reports.