GBP

Ad holding company WPP Group is beginning the new year with preparations to lay off of thousands at its global agencies, Guardian reported. The decision was made during budget meetings held during the last two months. The units that have staffing costs greater than 60 percent of revenue. But the cuts at the global company will not be spread evenly. Reductions will be heavily felt in North America and Western Europe, places that have been hit hard by the advertising slump.

A very quick exit for a service just launched: Socialmedian, the New York City-based social news service launched by former Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg, has been acquired by Xing, the Germany-headquartered European business social network.

Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) has increased its stake in Eidos' Lara Croft game maker SCi Entertainment, which last week renamed to Eidos Plc, as bidders continue to hover over the ailing studio. Time Warner increased its holding from 42.5 million to 52.5 million shares, or 19.92 percent of the outfit. Time Warner originally bought a 10 percent stake in 2006 for about $87.5 million.

UK commercial TV leader ITV (LSE: ITV) and telco BT (NYSE: BT) are signing up to a BBC project to create an open standard for delivering on-demand video over broadband to living room TVs. They are joining Project Canvas, under which the BBC wants to mobilise content makers, ISPs and set-top box manufacturers to develop a common platform for access both to broadcast and on-demand internet video.

Today's news that Reed Elsevier's proposed auction of B2B division Reed Business Information has failed comes after months of behind-the-scenes negotiating, departures and optimistic predictions from the publisher. The next installment in the tale is likely to be the restructuring of RBI and—eventually—another invitation to anyone that might be interested to make a bid for it. Until then, here's our history of the sale process in links going back to February.

The UK government is being urged to create a £1 billion ($1.47 billion) venture capital fund for high-tech startups in a bid to innovate its way out of the economic downturn.

Time Out is selling its New York edition for $40 million (£26.8 million) after its investors pushed for a return on their 13-year investment—the magazine's founder Tony Elliot wants to hold on the mag but can't afford to buy them out. He tells Times Online that a TONY sale will take place for the right price, but "if somebody offers $10 million, it won't happen".

LinkedIn rival Xing's founder and CEO Lars Hinrichs has stepped down from the post to concentrate on "new entrepreneurial challenges", and is being replaced by Dr. Stefan Gross-Selbeck, eBay's general manager for Germany. But Hinrichs remains on the company's board and remains its largest shareholder, he confirmed on his blog. No further info given behind the CEO swap.

The BBC has been blocked from beginning a £68 million ($101 million), four-year program to add video bulletins to its 65 local UK websites - a proposal that had been vigorously contested by concerned commercial publishers. After a five-month inquiry, the BBC Trust regulator said on Friday the plan would hurt the nascent online video efforts of struggling local newspaper publishers, many of which were forced to answer falling profits and the classified ads downturn with layoffs this week.

From our sister site PCUK: Independent News & Media (INM) plans to make about 60 redundancies from its 250 Independent editorial staff by the New Year, in a US-style slash-and-burn that this country has rarely seen outside regionals and magazines. In all, 90 of 424 total staff will go in a bid to save £10 million, FT.com says.