Welcome to today's round-up of business news from The Times: what we're saying, what they're saying, what you should be thinking

Top stories

The Times: The pressure on Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways, is set to intensify as he announces a further profit warning on Friday and faces a pilots' strike within ten days.

Financial Times: Banks are preparing to swap between £80 billion and £90 billion of mortgage-backed assets for Treasury bills with the Bank of England - nearly twice as much as envisaged.

The Wall Street Journal: Unusual moves in a widely used interest rate have prompted central bank officials in the US and UK to pay more attention to its formulation.

Comment

David Wighton in The Times: BT shares are trading on a prospective yield of 7 per cent, which is scarcely a standing ovation for the outgoing chief executive or his successor.

Lex in Financial Times: It has taken a global crisis for the eurozone to outperform. But on the basis of first-quarter GDP growth, the degree of pessimism about the outlook is a bit overdone.

The Independent: Barclays is buying in Russia and aggressively expanding in investment banking. If this is denial, it's certainly got chutzpah.

Upside

BBC: The US Federal Reserve auctioned only $7 billion (£3.6 billion) of $25 billion in securities available, suggesting that lenders are finding alternative funding.

The Times: Ben Verwaayen, the outgoing chief executive of BT, announced an unexpectedly high 2 per cent rise in revenue for the fourth quarter and pre-tax profits up 3 per cent at £714 million.

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