ANTIQUES SHOPS

In his annual Mansion House policy speech to London financiers on Thursday, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said Britain would launch a scheme to provide cheap long-term funding to banks to encourage them to lend to businesses and consumers.

He also said the bank would activate an emergency liquidity tool.

Treasury officials said the government plan could support an estimated 80 billion pounds in new loans, while the central bank's separate scheme will provide monthly 5 billion pound tranches of six-month liquidity to banks.

King said the case for pumping more money into the economy via further purchases of government bonds had increased as the outlook for the economy had worsened, although he again rejected calls for the central bank to buy private assets.

King said the euro zone's woes were leading to a crisis of confidence in Britain which was leading to a self-reinforcing weaker picture of growth.

"The black cloud has dampened animal spirits so that businesses and households are battening down the hatches to prepare for the storms ahead," he said.

Britain's action comes just before cliffhanger Greek elections this weekend that could determine the fate of the euro zone, as well as a meeting of the leaders of the world's major economies next week to find ways to tackle the currency bloc's crisis and spur the global economy.

British finance minister George Osborne warned of the huge dangers from a collapse of the euro area. He again urged euro zone leaders to fix the crisis and said Britain was taking action to protect its own economy.

"We are not powerless in the face of the euro zone debt storm," Osborne said in his speech at Mansion House. "Together we can deploy new firepower to defend our economy from the crisis on our doorstep."

Britain is still reeling from the 2007-2009 financial crisis that has left many Britons poorer and forced the country to bail out big banks with tens of billions of pounds of taxpayers' money.

The government on Thursday announced a sweeping reform of bank regulations aimed at making financial institutions safer, and avoiding a re-run of the crisis which has pushed Britain into recession twice in the last four years.

CASH BOOST

Britain slid back into recession around the turn of this year, piling pressure on Osborne's embattled Conservative-led coalition government to come up with new ways to boost growth.

The government has pinned its fortunes on a tough austerity plan of tax hikes and spending cuts to erase a budget deficit which still comes in at around 8 percent of GDP.

Osborne defended his debt-cutting measures, arguing that they gave the Bank of England the leeway to keep monetary policy loose, and said there was still more the central bank could do.

BoE Governor Mervyn King said the central bank would complement its quantitative easing asset purchase scheme with new steps to encourage bank lending and reduce their funding costs, which have rocketed as a result of the euro zone crisis.

The BoE and finance ministry have designed a new scheme, to be launched in a few weeks, that would offer banks loans with a maturity of possibly 3-4 years at below current market rates.

The loans would be made available on condition that banks increase their lending to businesses and households.

In addition, the central bank will activate its Extended Collateral Term Repo facility, created in December, to provide six-month liquidity to banks against a wide range of collateral.

King said now was the right time to activate the scheme, which is aimed at helping banks through phases of exceptional stress.

King hinted that the central bank may also restart its QE program, which it halted in May having bought 325 billion pounds of British government bonds, and countered accusations that the scheme had lost its effectiveness.

"With signs of a deterioration in the outlook, especially in world markets, the case for a further monetary easing is growing," King said. ($1 = 0.6434 British pounds)

(Additional reporting by Fiona Shaikh, Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt, Ron Askew and David Brunnstrom)

* Former Telefonica exec not standing for re-election

* New CEO Heins was paid $10.2 mln in last fiscal year

* Shares drop more than 4 pct to near $10 (Adds comment from RIM's chairman; updates share price move)

By Alastair Sharp

TORONTO, June 14 (Reuters) - Shares of Research In Motion fell 2.5 percent on Thursday after the struggling BlackBerry maker named a financier to replace a telecom executive on its board, disappointing investors looking for more sweeping changes.

The company, whose share price has tumbled alongside its once-dominant share of the smartphone market, also said it paid its new CEO more than $10 million in the company's last fiscal year and gave him hundreds of thousands of stock options to take the top job in January.

It also revealed millions of dollars in payments to former co-CEO Jim Balsillie, when he parted ways with RIM.

"There may be some tough questions asked or some shareholder backlash if the change at the top is just this," said Sameet Kanade, an analyst at Northern Securities, referring to the announcements, made in a filing ahead of RIM's annual meeting next month.

Kanade said the filing suggested the company was making little progress toward the broad changes investors are seeking.

RIM has lost favor as the email-centric BlackBerry falls behind in a fast-changing smartphone market now dominated by Apple Inc's iPhone and devices using Google Inc's Android software.

Still, the nomination of financier Timothy Dattels to the board could indicate RIM is more seriously considering going private, or mulling a leveraged buyout for the company.

Dattels, a senior partner at private equity firm TPG Capital LP, previously served as Goldman Sachs' head of investment banking for Asia excluding Japan.

He replaces Antonio Viana-Baptista, a former Telefonica SA executive who had been a RIM director since September 2009. RIM said Viana-Baptista opted out so he could spend more time in his role as CEO of Credit Suisse in Iberia.

RIM is proposing the re-election of the remainder of its board at an annual meeting on July 10. It said it would look to add one or more new board members in the current fiscal year.

RIM's Nasdaq-listed shares closed 2.5 percent lower at $10.40 on Thursday. The stock has lost more than 70 percent of its value over the past year.

COMPENSATION ISSUES

The company said Thorsten Heins, who was promoted to chief executive earlier this year, received total compensation of $10.2 million in fiscal 2012, which ended late in March. He received an award of 400,000 restricted stock units, which vest over a three-year period, for taking the top job.

"It didn't excite anyone," Fred Ketchen, director of equity trading at ScotiaMcLeod, said of the filing. "I think the money aspect is a factor" in the stock decline, he said.

A year ago, RIM narrowly avoided a vote of confidence on its management when an investor withdrew a motion to split the CEO and chairman roles after the company promised to study the issue. The roles were shared at the time by Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie.

Some watchers were hoping for more agitation this year.

"It would be nice to see an activist make a play but they would have to believe that it could be fixed and they don't," said Eric Jackson, a fund manager at Ironfire Capital.

Lazaridis and Balsillie stepped down from their roles in January, though Lazaridis remains an influential member of the board, serving as vice-chairman. When Heins took over as CEO in January, board member Barbara Stymiest became chairwoman.

"Over the past six months, the board and Thorsten have been proactively working together to introduce significant changes in the company as we move towards the launch of our next generation BlackBerry platform," said Stymiest in a statement.

"We are actively exploring new partnerships and other opportunities to extend the reach of BlackBerry and enhance long-term value for all RIM stakeholders," she added.

In its filing, RIM said Balsillie was paid $4.8 million in relation to his resignation, while Lazaridis was paid more than $850,000. Both had agreed to cut their base salary to $1 in their last days in the top job.

Balsillie's stock options, which he will be able to access quicker since he left the board in March, takes the total value of his entitlements to $7.9 million. Lazaridis would receive entitlements totaling $3.9 million should he leave the board, and would retain an office, company car and driver.

The smartphone maker, headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, has warned it expects to post an operating loss in the quarter just ended. Those numbers are due to be released on June 28.

That latest warning follows a stream of lowered earnings forecasts, product delays, writedowns and an embarrassing global network outage that left millions of people without email on their BlackBerry phones for several days.

A string of senior staff have left - including RIM's top salesman and chief lawyer last month - and it has hired bankers for a strategic review that could lead to an overhaul of its business model or less drastic moves such as partnerships and licensing deals. It has not ruled out a sale of the company. (Additional reporting by Euan Rocha and Jon Cook in Toronto; Editing by Frank McGurty)

Inscribing one of the steel beams that will be part of the building's framework, Obama wrote: "We remember, we rebuild, we come back stronger!" followed by his signature.

Obama has touted the killing of Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader behind the attacks on the United States, as one of his top national security achievements and refers to it often as he campaigns for re-election.

The president and first lady looked down on the 9/11 memorial from One World Trade Center's 22nd floor, which is still under construction, after walking beneath bare pipes illuminated by light bulbs strung from the unfinished ceiling.

"We couldn't be prouder of you guys. This is what the American spirit is all about," Obama told construction workers after a brief outdoor ceremony in the shadow of the building, which is scheduled to be completed in late 2013.

Obama visited the site last September to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the 2001 attacks by al Qaeda that killed nearly 3,000 people and destroyed the landmark t w in towers.

In April, One World Trade Center surpassed the Empire State Building as New York's tallest structure, with a horizontal beam laid at a height of 1,270 feet (387 meters).

When completed, it will rise 1,776 feet (541 meters) to the tip of its antenna, taller than the World Trade Center towers. Construction began six years ago on the edifice, which was formerly called the Freedom Tower.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has called the building "a symbol of the enduring spirit of the city and state of New York." (Reporting By Alister Bull; Editing by Eric Walsh)