Today’s Newspaper stories for Financial Professionals – in a succinct and relevant round up:

The agreement between Greek politicians was initially heralded as the breakthrough to unlock a €130bn (£109bn) international bail-out package to avoid Greek bankruptcy. However, the chairman of a meeting of the 17 Eurozone finance ministers last night said fresh conditions will have to be met before the bail-out is endorsed. Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the eurogroup, said an extra €325m (£273m) in savings for 2012 will be needed. The Greek parliament will also have to agree the deal on Sunday and politicians will have to promise to stick with the package after elections in May. “We did not yet have all necessary elements on the table to take decisions today,” Mr Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister, said. “In short: no disbursement before implementation.” The European finance ministers will meet again next Wednesday if the conditions are met, he added, The Telegraph says.

The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee voted to increase its quantitative easing (QE) programme, which will take the total assets purchased to £325bn since the process was started in March 2009. Interest rates were left on hold at 0.5% as expected. However, QE has left more than a million pensioners permanently poorer it was claimed on Thursday night. Economist Ros Altman, Saga’s director-general, said the programme pushed annuity rates down, and had contributed to them falling by about a quarter over the past three years. A £100,000 annuity bought in 2008 would have given an annual income of almost £7,900 but now delivers less than £6,000, according to The Telegraph.

Mick Davis, chief executive of Xstrata, is trying to convince his shareholders to back the miner’s proposed all-share merger with trading giant Glencore, which would be the biggest mining deal ever seen – if it goes ahead. Mr Davis needs to do more to sell the deal to his shareholders, according to Jane Coffey, head of equities at Royal London Asset Management (RLAM). It holds a 0.4% stake in Xstrata, according to Bloomberg data, worth about £140m. “We are feeling disappointed that they [Xstrata management] haven’t sold it [the deal] to us,” Ms Coffey said. “What we’d like to see them doing is being more proactive in going round to shareholders and giving them a good reason to want to invest in ‘Glenstrata’. “They need to show why it will add to the value of the group. At the moment it’s just that we need to – that the previous situation [with Glencore owning 34% of Xstrata] was not sustainable, The Telegraphs writes.

Goldman Sachs has placed a bet on surging economic growth in Mongolia, taking a 4.8% stake in the country’s oldest bank. With Mongolia’s economy forecast to grow by as much as 25% this year and 30% in 2013, Goldman has joined the Asian Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation in buying a stake in Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia. Goldman did not disclose how much it paid for the holding in the privately owned bank, although insiders stressed it was a passive stake designed to give it exposure to a booming economy. It is understood that Goldman deliberately held the stake below 4.99% because taking a bigger holding would have triggered greater disclosure requirements under US law, The Times reports.

Buy-to-let is bouncing back while the rest of the property market struggles, with mortgage figures showing landlords purchasing 20% more homes last year. The rise in buy-to-let properties bought, revealed by the Council of Mortgage Lenders today, comes over the same period that residential purchases are expected to fall by five per cent and first-time buys will remain near record lows. But lenders say they are not favouring landlords over first-time buyers. CML director general Paul Smee said: ‘These figures do not suggest that buy-to-let is crowding out first-time buyers; more that it is performing a really important role within the overall housing market,’ The Daily Maily says.

Donald Trump is to fund an international crusade against “monstrous” windfarm developments around Scotland’s coast, after launching an astonishing broadside over First Minister Alex Salmond’s plans to streamline the offshore planning process. In a furious attack, the billionaire US businessman accused Mr Salmond of being “hell-bent on destroying Scotland’s coastline and therefore Scotland itself”. In a letter to Mr Salmond, Mr Trump said: “You will single-handedly have done more damage to Scotland than virtually any event in Scottish history!” Only four years ago, the two men appeared to be best of golfing friends, when Mr Trump invited the First Minister and actor Sir Sean Connery to join him on the first tee at the opening of what he called the “world’s greatest golf course”, after the Scottish Government stepped in to rescue his £750m luxury resort in Aberdeenshire, The Scotsman says.

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