However sources close to Mr Ritblat denied last night that either he or British Land

However, sources close to Mr Ritblat denied last night that either he or British Land had asked the DTI to investigate. The loan was organised by Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB), the Swiss investment bank.There is no suggestion that any of these organisations did anything illegal, but Mr Ritblat is furious that they enabled Laxey to exert far more power over British Land than it merited. The rest was borrowed temporarily from Hermes, the Post Office pension fund manager, Barclays Global Investors and Scottish Widows, the life insurance and investment arm of Lloyds TSB, and returned after the British Land meeting. All these resolutions were defeated, but a clearly ruffled Mr Ritblat announced afterwards that he was stepping down from the board next year.It has since emerged that Laxey owns 1 per cent of British Land in its own right. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has launched an investigation into the decision by three major investment institutions to lend shares in British Land so that Laxey Partners, a corporate agitator, could put pressure on the the company’s management.
At last Tuesday’s annual general meeting of the property group, Laxey voted with a 9 per cent stake to unseat John Ritblat – the company’s long-standing chairman and chief executive – and other directors and to propose share buybacks and that British Land hand over management of more of the company’s property portfolio to external managers. But the deal is not expected to be completed until December, because of US tax considerations..

Triarc, owner of the Arby’s fast-food chain, was also interested but is understood to have dropped out.If the Goldman-Bain-Texas group is confirmed as the favoured bidder, final negotiations will commence, aimed at reaching an agreed price for the Whopper burgers and Chicken Whopper chain, which has 11,435 outlets in 57 countries including the UK. Analysts believe that their offer is likely to edge out a rival proposal from Thomas H Lee Partners, another American group. The $2.3bn (£1.5bn) auction for Burger King, the “chicken your way” fast-food chain owned by the drinks group Diageo, is entering its final phase and an announcement could be made this week.
While Diageo was declining to comment yesterday, sources suggested that the leading place in the bidding was being taken by a US consortium consisting of John Dasburg, Burger King’s chairman and chief executive, backed by Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Bain Capital and Texas Pacific. One way or another the outlook is for a period of considerably weaker activity in the household sector than that seen for most of the last decade.”.

“With the financial markets looking so precarious, it would certainly be an error to raise rates now,” Professor Spencer said.A separate economic forecast published today, from the accountants Deloitte & Touche, forecasts economic growth this year at an anaemic 1.5 per cent.Its economic adviser, Roger Bootle, warned that the consumer economy, which has sustained growth over the last months, was about to “hit the buffers”.Mr Bootle said record debts, falling stock markets and a slowdown in the housing market would slow consumer spending enough to limit the need to raise interest rates.However, he warned: “If spending does not slow on its own, policymakers have made it clear they will slam the brakes on households themselves. But he added: “The Bank will wait until equity markets have at least stabilised and the international environment appears more robust – which may well not be until early next year.”He urged the Bank not to be distracted by the recent surge in house prices. The UK economy sprung back into life over the early summer months, official figures are expected to confirm later this week. Shares in the unit, now called mmO2, started trading independently of their parent on the stock market last November.. More recently, the UK telecoms giant BT, headed by Ben Verwaayen, demerged its mobile phone unit BT Cellnet. The problems often come from clumsy integration, which has a habit of destroying focus and motivation – the factors that make demergers successful,” said Mr Knowles-Cutler.The Deloitte & Touche survey was based on an analysis of the 118 biggest demergers carried out worldwide between 1990 and 1999.

Acquiring businesses that are greeted with share price rises of 3 per cent or more following the merger announcement fail to increase value in year one, while those greeted with a share price drop under-perform even further.”The frequent hike in share price on announcement of a merger is often justified [because] the rationale behind the deal is well founded. Management is able to focus on the core business, decision making becomes easier, and motivation rises with greater sense of ownership of the smaller business and shared sense of direction,” he said.Conversely, he said the opposite can be true of mergers. “In reality, the potential diseconomies of scale for both separating entities are far outweighed by clarity of purpose provided by the demerger. Corporate demergers create significant value for shareholders in both the parent company and the demerged, or separated, entity within a year of the deal being completed, a new survey has found. Estimates for the division range between £400m and £480m, although earlier this month analysts at Merrill Lynch put a £395m valuation on the broadcast arm.. Carlton Communications has long been speculated to buy the business, as has its rival, Granada Group, while the assets are also likely to be attractive to the German media company, Bertelsmann.SMG, which is known to be looking at ways at reducing its £390m debts, believes its television licences are substantially undervalued and would fetch a decent price if sold.