Ex-CEO of Barclays doesn’t implicate authorities

LONDON – The former boss of Barclays, who lost his job over a financial market-fixing scandal, said Wednesday that a Bank of England official had not encouraged him to report false data at the height of the credit crunch in 2008.

Bob Diamond, who resigned as chief executive a day earlier, was grilled by a parliamentary committee about his conversation with Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England, on Oct. 29, 2008.

That conversation, disclosed Tuesday by Barclays, has become the focus of questions about the false data submitted by Barclays between 2005 and 2009 which last week drew a fine of $453 million by U.S. and British agencies.

Diamond wrote a memo recording Tucker as saying about Barclays’ borrowing rates “that while he was certain we did not need advice, that it did not always need to be the case that we appeared as high as we have recently.”

The question was whether this was a veiled encouragement by Tucker for Barclays to report lower borrowing rates. Diamond said he did not take it to be an order or even, as committee chairman Andrew Tyrie suggested, “a nod and a wink, even though it reads that way to almost anyone who looks at it.”

Diamond said a subordinate, Jerry del Missier, misunderstood the memo and ordered his staff to lower their reported rates. Del Missier also resigned Tuesday, a day after Barclays chairman Marcus Agius said he was stepping down.

French budget calls for higher taxes on estates

PARIS – France’s Socialist government wants to raise $9 billion in new revenue from higher taxes on estates, banks and oil companies to try to reduce the deficit.

The measures are among those in a revised 2012 budget draft presented at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday. It will go to parliament later this month, where it is expected to win approval.

France’s new leadership has criticized austerity measures imposed around Europe, saying they are making the region’s debt crisis worse. It has focused on higher taxes for the well-off, though some spending cuts are also expected.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, speaking at a Fourth of July event at the U.S. Embassy, warned that Europe’s debt crisis “has not been extinguished” and that it’s not a “problem of the Europeans alone.”

Major merger for Canadian exchanges

TORONTO – Canada’s Competition Bureau and Ontario’s securities regulator on Wednesday approved a $3.75 billion bid by a Canadian consortium to buy TMX Group, the operator of the Toronto Stock Exchange, and merge it with two other exchanges.

The Competition Bureau posted on its website that it does not intend to challenge Maple Group Acquisition Corp’s bid for TMX Group.

The approval came as the Ontario Securities Commission also gave its approval and published final recognition orders for the deal.

British court rules two Budweisers can coexist

PRAGUE – State-owned Czech brewery Budejovicky Budvar NP says a British court has rejected Anheuser-Busch’s request to have Budvar’s Budweiser trademark declared invalid, in the latest ruling in a long legal battle over the brand name.

Budvar said Wednesday the ruling by Britain’s Court of Appeal, which is final, means that unlike other markets, Anheuser-Busch and the Czech brewer can both continue to use the Budweiser trademark in Britain.