Sunday newspaper round-up: Vodafone, Royal Bank of Scotland, Encore...

Vodafone is preparing to raise more than £4bn by selling its shares in China Mobile, the first in a string of planned disposals by the mobile-phone giant.

Investors expect the deal to be rubber-stamped next month before an update on Vodafone's strategy in November. It is deciding whether to find a strategic investor for the stake or to sell the shares on the Hong Kong stock market, where China Mobile is listed, the Sunday Times reports.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is considering a cut-price sale of its Direct Line insurance business after a flood of interest from potential bidders, including the billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Spiralling claims from car accidents have led to heavy losses at the insurance arm, which also owns the Churchill brand. Although the business was being lined up for a stock-market flotation, the slide into the red is thought to have derailed those plans, the Sunday Times reports.

The deputy governor of the Bank of England signalled that the Bank would make aggressive use of new powers planned by the Government to head off any future financial crisis. In a major position paper, Charles Bean said that the Bank had been powerless to prevent what he called the "Great Contraction" of 2008 because control of interest rates was not, in itself, a powerful enough tool, the Sunday Telegraph reports.

Mining group Vedanta Resources has been stripped of international safety awards amid concerns that it won without declaring that a chimney collapse at one of its sites had killed at least 40 workers last September - one of the worst industrial tragedies in India's recent history. Awards to Vedanta have been immediately withdrawn by the British Safety Council (BSC) in response to findings thrown up by a broader Observer analysis of deaths of workers at all FTSE 100 mining groups.

Tony Hayward, the outgoing boss of the oil giant BP, is being lined up for a return to a top corporate job. A City plot has emerged to resurrect the career of the 53-year-old, who was forced to resign in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. He was dubbed "America's most hated man" after President Barack Obama and his administration persistently criticised BP for its handling of the crisis. Some of Britain's biggest institutional shareholders have held secret talks about bringing Hayward back to a senior role in business, possibly with a large mining or engineering firm, the Sunday Times reports.

Tesco is slashing about 2,000 management roles at its Express convenience stores as part of a restructuring plan. Britain's biggest supermarket chain has begun a 90-day consultation period with employees who hold the title of duty manager. That position will be replaced by the post of deputy manager, which Tesco said was a more responsible position and would be offered to about half of the 2,000 workers involved in the consultation process, the Mail on Sunday reports.

Nathan Kirsh, the billionaire rebel shareholder battling for control of property developer Minerva, would consider splitting the company in two and turning one half into a real-estate investment trust (REIT). He also wants to sell off assets including a 100,000 sq ft property on Kensington High Street, London, where Minerva has planning permission to develop housing and a cinema, the Sunday Telegraph reports.

FTSE-100 stalwart Anglo American has put the $1bn international assets of Scaw Metals up for sale as the mining sector leads the recent deal boom. Advisers Goldman Sachs and UBS have set the deadline for first-round bids on the steel maker's international operations of early next month in the latest phase of Anglo American's reorganisation programme, the Sunday Independent reports.

The Congolese army has taken over the country's largest copper mine from the London-listed firm First Quantum Minerals. Soldiers yesterday seized the Congo's largest copper mine from First Quantum Minerals, the London-listed firm that has operated the site for three years. The Frontier mine is one of the largest in sub-Saharan Africa, producing 100,000 tonnes of copper a year. First Quantum said it had suspended operations after being informed that Sodimico, the mining group owned by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), had been given the project's mining licence, the Sunday Times reports.

Hopes of a renaissance for the North Sea oil industry will be given a boost this week when another big discovery is expected to be announced. Encore Oil, a London-listed explorer, and Wintershall, the oil arm of BASF, the German chemicals giant, will reveal that the Cladhan field, northeast of the Shetland Islands, holds between 100m and 200m barrels, according to industry sources, the Sunday Times reports.

Britain's largest mobile-phone company is threatening the government with legal action after plans for a landmark £5bn auction of the television airwaves were ripped up. Everything Everywhere (EE), the parent company of Orange and T-Mobile that has more than 30m customers, is angry that it must now take part in next year's sale on equal terms with its two main rivals, Vodafone and O2, the Sunday Times reports.