According to The Times, Qatar's sovereign wealth fund may be planning an 'audacious' takeover bid for High Street giant Marks & Spencer for eight billion pounds. The paper says that if shares in M&S rise more than five per cent on speculation of a bid, the FTSE 100-listed company or any possible bidder would be under pressure to release a statement under Takeover Panel rules.

The Telegraph writes that the FTSE 100 will fall sharply in early trading on Monday, tracking Asian markets and the euro lower, as fears over Cyprus escalate. With the country taxing savers' deposits, it has raised fears "that it could set a precedent for future Eurozone bailouts", the paper says.

The Ernst & Young Item Club estimates that the public borrowing bill in this week's Budget will be £88bn (excluding one-off effects), up £8.0bn from the official £80bn forecast by the Officer for Budget Responsibility three months ago, writes The Telegraph. The paper says that Chancellor George Osborne "faces political humiliation" when he reveals his Budget statement on Wednesday.

The Engineering Employers Federation (EEF) has found that women account for 19% of the board at the 29 manufacturing firms listed on the FTSE 100, higher than the 17% average across the index as a whole, reports The Independent. However, with nine out of 10 engineers being male, the EEF says that the number of women engineers is "far too low".

According to the Financial Times, the world's biggest insurance companies have escaped bank-style capital levies based on their whole balance sheets with the International Association of Insurance Supervisors unveiling plans this week to deal with "systemically important insurers", sources told the paper. The paper says that capital surcharges - much like the capital buffers that banks have been ordered to hold - will be limited to a percentage of insurers' "non-traditional non-insurance businesses", rather than their entire balance sheets.

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