ANTIQUES SHOPS

This is the first enforcement action by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, which is about to hit its first anniversary. Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director of advocacy group U.S. PIRG, says it's significant to the future of the agency that this first move was against a big company over a pernicious practice.

"This is a big event for a young agency," he said. "They brought their first action against one of the biggest, most politically active firms, and that will send a clear message that violations of the law will not be tolerated."

Capital One agreed to pay $150 million to reimburse more than 2 million customers who bought aggressively marketed payment protection and credit monitoring services; customers will get a credit on their accounts or a check in the mail.

What does the CFPB action mean for Capital One customers and everyone else?

1. Stronger warnings for consumers about add-on services

The settlement should show consumers that they need to beware of pitches they hear from credit card issuers, especially when activating a card.

The CFPB says Capital One violated regulations that prohibit call-center vendors from engaging in deceptive tactics to sell the company's credit card add-on products, specifically payment protection plans and credit-monitoring services.

First of all, Mierzwinski said, "Consumers should know that credit protection and monitoring are the worst add-on products you can buy."

Travis Plunkett, legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America, is no kinder, referring to these services as "junk products."

The CFPB also issued a warning to consumers on what to watch out for with these products, primarily that you should be wary of any pitch when you are activating a new credit card. (here)

Ryan Schneider, president of Capital One's card business, said, "We are accountable for the actions that vendors take on our behalf. These marketing calls were inconsistent with the explicit instructions we provided to agents for how these products should be sold." (link.reuters.com/xyz49s)

2. Customers will get no-hassle refunds.

Capital One is responsible, with oversight, for determining who is entitled to refunds and will either credit current accounts or mail out checks.

The CFPB emphasizes that ease for consumers is its main concern: "It's been important to make sure that the refunds were managed in a way that was convenient to consumers. Consumers are not required to take any action."

The agency says customers will be reimbursed according to how much they spent, and the settlement is just an estimate of how much it will cost.

An additional $60 million goes into the Civil Penalty Fund, which was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law as a reserve to reimburse victims and for consumer education and financial literacy programs. (For more information on refunds see link.reuters.com/suz49s)

3. Others might benefit directly, too.

"This settlement is not unique and I expect there to be more activity," CFPB director Richard Cordray said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Plunkett said the deceptive practices that got Capital One in trouble are widespread in the industry. "This is a shot across the bow of all companies selling junk financial products and misleading consumers about them - that they better be more careful. It has direct effect and a hugely significant effect on the whole financial services industry," he said.

While Capital One is the only company currently not allowed to market these add-on credit card products at all - they have to get a plan approved by the CFPB before they can resume - Mierzwinski expects other credit card issuers to stop selling them.

"It would be stupid to continue to market this kind of product," he said.

But Brian Riley, who worked at JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup Inc and First Union/Wachovia (now Wells Fargo & Co) for many years and is now senior research director for the CEB Tower Group, said such practices may be too complicated to unravel because they are already baked into the revenue models for the next three years.

"You can't just unplug it if you're a publicly traded company," he said, adding that some banks may "self-confess" to the CFPB and take their lumps.

4. Other shoes will drop.

Both the CFPB and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which partnered on the action against Capital One, have web-based complaint systems where consumers can enter information. The CFPB says it will follow up with any Capital One customers who feel they didn't get a refund when they were due one, and also for customers of other banks who feel they've been duped.

The CFPB is currently collecting consumer complaints on a number of other topics and following up on them, including student loans, other credit card complaints and credit report errors. (see consumerfinance.gov)

While future enforcement actions are rarely telegraphed in advance, Plunkett hopes that next on the agenda are mortgage services abuses and payday lending practices. And he has high hopes for what is to come.

"They probably have a lot of things they are investigating, and it's a good sign that they didn't pick an obscure corner of the marketplace to get started," he said.

(Follow us @ReutersMoney or here. Editing by Linda Stern and John Wallace)

* JJB Sports warns of funding shortfall, H1 sales down 8.7 pct

* Halfords CEO exits as Q1 sales fall 5.6 pct

* Mothercare Q1 UK sales down 6.7 pct

* PM Cameron sees no end to UK austerity

By James Davey

LONDON, July 19 (Reuters) - The devastating economic impact of Britain's sodden summer was laid bare on Thursday as major retailers Kingfisher, Halfords, JJB Sports and Mothercare all said the exceptional wet weather had hit demand, fraying investors' nerves.

Government data also showed that overall June retail sales were worse than expected.

The wettest April to June period since records began has exacerbated an already tough situation for retailers in an economy mired in recession and austerity, hitting sales of goods ranging from barbecues to bicycles to football shirts.

Britain fell back into recession at the start of the year and consumers are holding back on spending. Although inflation is easing and unemployment falling they are still being squeezed by meagre wage increases and government austerity measures designed to cut record debt.

A constant stream of negative headlines about the impact of the euro zone debt crisis is also weighing on confidence.

Prime Minister David Cameron will have done little to lift the move when he said on a newspaper report that Britain's programme of spending cuts could last until 2020.

"I can't see any time soon when ... the pressure will be off," he said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

Thursday's raft of retail updates came as official retail sales data for June showed retail sales volumes fell by 0.7 percent, the sharpest fall since the first quarter of 2010.

"The unprecedented wet weather across Northern Europe has continued throughout our second quarter so far, clearly impacting footfall and consumer demand for outdoor and seasonal products," said Ian Cheshire, chief executive of Kingfisher , Europe's biggest home improvement retailer.

Kingfisher said underlying sales fell 0.4 percent in the 10 weeks to July 7, the bulk of its fiscal second quarter.

That represented a pick-up from a first quarter fall of 4.8 percent, but reflected price cuts at its B&Q business in the UK and Ireland to clear horticultural stocks as well as other promotions. That will hit B&Q's profit margins.

Shares in sporting goods retailer JJB Sports tumbled 27 percent after the firm warned it was running into funding problems again and was in talks with strategic partners.

The firm, which issued a profit warning last week on the back of poor sales of Euro 2012 football shirts, also reported an 8.7 percent slump in first half underlying sales.

Halfords, the bicycles to car parts retailer, parted company with its chief executive of four years, David Wild, as it posted a 5.6 percent fall in underlying sales over its first quarter to June 29.

"The consumer environment remains difficult and the unseasonal weather conditions this quarter had a direct impact on sales of cycles and outdoor leisure products," said chairman Dennis Millard, who will temporarily take on an executive role while Wild's successor is sought.

Halfords warned it expected negative like-for-like sales for the balance of the year and 2012-13 pretax profit of 62-70 million pounds ($97-$109 million).

Its shares, down 45 percent over the past year, rose 8 percent on the back of Wild's exit.

Mother and baby products retailer Mothercare reported a 6.7 percent fall in underlying UK sales over its first quarter to July 14, highlighting "challenging trading conditions", offset in part by an 11 percent rise in international sales.

Sports Direct, Britain's biggest sporting goods retailer, bucked the gloomy trend, posting a 17 percent rise in year profit.

The unseasonably cold and wet weather has not been bad news for all retailers.

John Lewis, Britain's biggest department store group, has enjoyed stellar trading this summer as the deluge of rain has driven footfall from the high street to the covered shopping malls where its stores are often located. Wet and cold weather is also favourable for its key household goods business.

* Talks in September to discuss whether Libor can be saved

* Bernanke, Carney float possible market-based alternatives

* ECB pushes to overhaul Euribor setting - sources

* BoE's King says "radical reforms" needed

* Carney: wrongdoers need to substantially raise their game

By Randall Palmer

OTTAWA, July 19 (Reuters) - Central bankers and regulators will hold talks in September on whether the troubled global Libor interest rate can be reformed or whether it is so damaged that the benchmark of borrowing costs should be scrapped.

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King told fellow central bankers in a letter that it was "very clear that radical reforms of the Libor system are needed".

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and global financial regulator Mark Carney, who is also governor of the Bank of Canada, on Wednesday floated possible alternatives to the London interbank offered rate, which some bankers manipulated in the 2007-09 financial crisis.

"There are different alternatives if Libor cannot be fixed," Carney told a news conference in Ottawa.

"If it's structurally flawed and can't be fixed -- which is a possibility -- there may need to be different types of approaches, and we need to think that through."

The concerns over Libor prompted scrutiny of lending benchmarks elsewhere. The European Central Bank (ECB) is putting pressure on the organisers of Euribor to shore up faith in the euro benchmark, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan announced reviews of the way interbank benchmark rates were set in the Asian financial centres, while in South Korea the anti-trust agency widened a probe into possible rate-fixing.

Bank of England Governor King put the Libor issue on the agenda of the Economic Consultative Committee of global central bankers that will meet in Basel, Switzerland, on Sept. 9, a central bank source said.

The discussions will continue there the following week at the Financial Stability Board's steering committee, which is chaired by Carney and which also includes financial regulators.

"There is an attraction to moving to obviously more market-based rates if possible," Carney said in his news conference.

Libor is used for $550 trillion of interest rate derivatives contracts and influences a wide array of financial products from mortgages to credit cards, and Carney said it was crucial that markets be able to have "absolute confidence" in it.

Carney mentioned the possibility of using repo rates and Overnight Index Swap rates, two ideas also mentioned on Wednesday by Bernanke. The Fed Chairman singled out Treasury Bill rates as a potential benchmark, but said the Fed had not come out in favor of a specific alternative.

RATE-RIGGING SCANDAL

Dozens of banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co and Deutsche Bank, are under investigation in the rate-rigging scandal, where banks low-balled the rate to profit on trades and hide their own borrowing costs during the 2007-09 financial crisis.

Barclays Plc has already settled with U.S. and British regulators, paying a $453 million penalty.

Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said in Washington the scandal only built on the American public's mistrust of the industry after the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

"There was this huge hole to dig out of in terms of getting the trust back, and now it's just that much deeper," he said.

In Asia, the Hong Kong Association of Banks said it was reviewing the mechanism for determining its Hibor benchmark. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority said it supported the review and would monitor the process and outcome.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore said it was examining the setting of the Singapore interbank offered rate (Sibor), widely used in the pricing of mortgages and other loans in the city-state.

South Korea's Fair Trade Commission has investigated nine banks and 10 brokerages this week over suspected collusion in setting three-month certificate of deposit (CD) rates.

The Japanese banking industry lobby has asked the 18 banks contributing to the Tokyo interbank offered rate (Tibor) to check whether correct procedures were being followed, although the group's head said he did not believe there was a problem.

"We don't think there's any problem with (Tibor), but we decided on a check given growing public interest in Libor," the association's director, Shin Takagi, told a meeting of ruling party lawmakers on Thursday.

ALTERNATIVE RATES

Libor is calculated daily in London for the U.S. dollar and other currencies when panels of banks submit estimates of how much it costs them to borrow from each other.

It is thus a subjective call, as opposed to basing benchmarks more objectively so less manipulation is possible. The Australian Bank Bill Swaps Reference Rates, for example, are based on where paper is actually traded on the market.

The issue is similar for Euribor -- launched with the single currency in 1999 -- prompting the ECB to call for a re-think, including possibly shifting the basis of the calculation to actual lending rates.

"The big choice one has to make is whether you want posted rates or actual rates ... so at the end of the day, banks say what transaction they had at which price," said one central bank source. "If you use actual transactions you would have solved the problem."

Carney highlighted the Canadian Dealer Offered Rate because it is a committed rate: "It's actually a borrowing rate that is used by banks on a regular basis, almost daily basis when they take down syndicated BAs (banker acceptances)."

"So we may end up, we may -- I don't want to prescribe, it's very early days -- but we may end up with different types of rates used in different currencies," he said.

It is not a foregone conclusion that Libor will be abandoned, even if membership on Libor panels is voluntary.

Asked what would happen if banks pulled out, Carney said: "The best institutions recognize that they have a responsibility to remain in these panels and continue to post their estimates of where they can borrow."

He added: "To continue to do so ... isn't asking much."

He said most banks have posted figures accurately and "we should be a little careful not to tar all institutions in the panel with the actions of some." But wrongdoers "need to substantially raise their game" to levels of conduct expected in any other aspect of life.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to defend himself on Wednesday against criticisms that regulators should have taken bigger steps to address concerns over Libor.

In June 2008, Geithner, then head of the New York Federal Reserve, sent an email to Bank of England's King, recommending six ways to enhance the credibility of Libor after Barclays had flagged concerns as early as 2007.

"The U.S., to its credit, set in motion at that stage a very, very powerful enforcement response, the first results of which we have now seen," he said in New York. (Editing by Janet Guttsman, Tim Dobbyn and John Mair)

* Equity infusion plus incremental debt total about $2.5 bln

* Cash, debt deal pegs Suddenlink enterprise value at $6.6 bln (Adds details on deal, background; In U.S. dollars, unless noted)

By Euan Rocha

TORONTO, July 19 (Reuters) - Private equity firm BC Partners and one of Canada's top pension funds are joining forces with the management of Suddenlink Communications to buy out the U.S. cable operator in a cash and debt deal worth roughly $2.5 billion.

BC Partners and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board said late on Wednesday they are teaming up with U.S. cable industry veteran Jerry Kent to buy Suddenlink from Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Quadrangle and Oaktree Capital Management.

The Suddenlink deal is the latest in a string of deals in the cable sector both within and outside the United States.

The industry has seen some of the largest buyouts of the last two years, as both sector incumbents and private equity firms have swooped in to acquire cable companies that offer the promise of revenue growth and steady cash flows.

In August last year, Time Warner Cable bought cable operator, Insight Communications from Carlyle Group for $3 billion to grow its reach in the U.S. Midwest.

Earlier on Wednesday, Cogeco Cable Inc, a Canadian company that serves mostly rural customers in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, said it would pay $1.36 billion to buy U.S. cable operator Atlantic Broadband, in a move aimed at gaining a foothold in the larger U.S. market.

The Suddenlink deal includes a $1.99 billion equity portion, along with incremental debt of $500 million. Including existing debt, the deal pegs Suddenlink's enterprise value at $6.6 billion.

Suddenlink offers cable, Internet and telephone services to more than 1.4 million residential and commercial customers in Texas, West Virginia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. It is the seventh-largest U.S. cable operator with annual revenues of around $2 billion and 6,000 employees.

FURTHER GROWTH

Kent, who will continue in his role as Suddenlink's chief executive, said the deal will allow his team to invest further in new technology and infrastructure.

The executive, who has worked in the industry for close to three decades, co-founded cable operator Charter Communications Inc and built it into one of the top 10 U.S. cable companies.

"Cable is an industry we know well in both Europe and the United States" added BC Partners managing partner Raymond Svider, adding that the cable sector "epitomizes the defensive growth characteristics" that the firm typically seeks in an investment.

The deal comes almost exactly a year after the private equity firm agreed to acquire Swedish cable company Com Hem for $2.6 billion. BC Partners was also involved in the creation of German cable operator Unitymedia, which it later sold to U.S.-listed cable giant Liberty Global for $3 billion in 2009.

Earlier in July, Reuters reported Suddenlink's part owners - Quadrangle and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners - are preparing to sell Norwegian cable operator Get, either later this year or early next year.

SUDDENLINK DEAL

Suddenlink, which has recently undergone an infrastructure upgrade, said it is well positioned to benefit from continued strength in television viewership and industry trends like the growth in high-speed Internet adoption.

The company has consistently reported solid revenue growth over the last five years, boasting compounded annual revenue growth of 7.4 percent since 2007.

"This represents a unique opportunity to acquire a leading cable operator that has consistently generated industry-leading results," said André Bourbonnais, who heads private investments for CPPIB.

Toronto-based CPPIB manages funds for the Canadian Pension Plan. It invests in a wide range of assets and instruments. As of March 31, the fund was worth C$161.6 billion ($159.9 billion) of which C$26.3 billion was invested in private equities.

CPPIB, along with its Canadian peers like Teachers' and Caisse de depot et placement, have been among the world's most active dealmakers in recent years, making major bets both in Canada and overseas.

The companies said the Suddenlink deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2012, subject to regulatory approvals.

($1 = 1.0109 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by Euan Rocha in Toronto and Ashutosh Pandey and Adithya Venkatesan in Bangalore; Editing by Matt Driskill and David Cowell)