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Nationwide, Britain's biggest customer-owned financial services group, is interested in bidding for 316 branches being sold by Royal Bank of Scotland to speed up its expansion into lending to small and medium-sized businesses. A 1.65-billion-pound ($2.6 billion) deal to sell the branches collapsed last month after Spanish bidder Santander said the process of carving out the business from RBS had proved more difficult than expected. RBS, ordered to sell the branches as a condition of winning European nod for a bailout during the 2008 crisis, has sent new sales documents to prospective buyers, and is hoping to draw up a shortlist next month. “Strategically, we want to enter into the SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) space,” Nationwide Chief Executive Graham Beale told Reuters on Tuesday.

Ericsson sues Samsung for patent infringement

Ericsson, the world's biggest telecom network equipment maker, said it was suing Samsung Electronics for patent infringement after two years of talks failed to yield a licence agreement. Sweden's Ericsson, which reckons more than 40% of the world's mobile traffic passes through its networks, filed a lawsuit in the US saying Samsung had refused to sign a license to use technology on terms it referred to as fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND). Ericsson has tried long and hard to amicably come to an agreement with Samsung and sign an agreement on FRAND terms. “We have turned to litigation as a last resort,” Kasim Alfalahi, chief intellectual property officer at Ericsson said in a

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