William Dalton HSBC’s chief executive also said £1 was the figure his

William Dalton, HSBC’s chief executive, also said £1 was the figure his bank was looking at.But yesterday, Barclays appeared to have changed its mind. A spokesperson said: “It will definitely not be £1, it will be driven by market forces.” HSBC said it was still deciding on the charge, but said: “Halifax’s and Lloyds’ announcements will be taken into consideration but we want to see the way the market develops.”Abbey National, which has the most non-branch ATMs in the country, has also said it will introduce surcharges, but has not set the level. A spokesperson said: “Today’s announcement will absolutely be a factor in the decision we will make.”But this is not just about what other banks announce but also other considerations to come out of the Cruickshank report, like how cash machines will be impacted by changes to the payment system.”Philip Telford, a senior adviser at the Consumer’s Association, said banks which are sitting on the fence will be pressured to follow the lead of Halifax and Royal Bank of Scotland – which, with NatWest, owns nearly 5,000 cash machines, and has said it will not charge. Nationwide and the Co-operative bank also do not levy charges on any customers.Mr Telford said the banks would now “be under pressure to make the service free or at such a low level people’s own bank can refund the charge”.Peter Toeman, an analyst at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, said: “This announcement and the one from Lloyds proves how discriminatory these charges have been – they are not related to cost.” Halifax’s chief operating officer, Mike Ellis, said the move was intended to draw in more customers. Halifax has just launched If, its internet bank, with the aim of gaining 500,000 customers within a year.However Lloyds TSB, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC may feel the costs they would incur from making cash machines free are less desirable than increasing their customer base.. EMI, The Spice Girls to Beatles music company, yesterday insisted that its complex merger with Time Warner’s music division, unveiled in January, was on track as it reported full-year profits up 8.1 per cent.

EMI, The Spice Girls to Beatles music company, yesterday insisted that its complex merger with Time Warner’s music division, unveiled in January, was on track as it reported full-year profits up 8.1 per cent.
Eric Nicoli, the former United Biscuits chief who took over as chairman of EMI last year, said that despite scepticism from the City, he was confident that the Warner Music deal would win the approval of shareholders and competition authorities He said: “We think our case is compelling We have seen or heard nothing to convince us otherwise…. We have met our major shareholders one to one and they now understand why we’ve done what we’ve done.”EMI shares have dropped 26 per cent since details of the deal were announced in January, shortly after the announcement of Time Warner’s planned $163bn merger with AOL. Yesterday they closed up 4.5p at 573p but have underperformed the media sector by about 25 per cent in the past few months.Under the terms of the agreement, EMI investors will receive a one-off payment of 100p a share in return for handing control of a 50-50 joint venture between the two groups to the American company. Shares in EMI, which will in effect become a holding company with its share of the joint venture as its major asset, will remain listed in London and, under an incentive clause, Time Warner will be given an 8 per cent stake in the company if its shares hit 900p.Listing details will be posted to shareholders “in a few days” and they will be asked to approve the deal at an extraordinary general meeting three weeks later. Mr Nicoli said that “optimistic estimates” would see the anti-trust process in the UK, US and other markets concluded by late July. But he added “it could be three or four months after that”.EMI’s pre-tax profit beforeexceptionals for the year ended 31 March was £245.4m on flat sales of £2.39bn.

EMI saw its market share in the US drop to 9 per cent from 12.3 per cent as Britpop artists such as Robbie Williams failed to compete with American acts such as Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys, who are both signed to the Jive independent record label.. National Grid has scrapped plans to bid for Britain’s air traffic control system and decided to concentrate on buying another US electricity company and expanding its telecoms operations in Latin America. National Grid has scrapped plans to bid for Britain’s air traffic control system and decided to concentrate on buying another US electricity company and expanding its telecoms operations in Latin America.
The group yesterday announced a further £125m investment in two telecoms ventures in Argentina and Chile as part of a strategy to build a pan-American network in the next two years.David Jones, chief executive, hopes to pull off another US deal this year similar in size to the £2.1bn acquisition in March of the US East Coast utility, New England Electric System.Mr Jones denied the decision not to bid for National Air Traffic Services (Nats) was influenced by political controversy over the part-privatisation. “It was purely a question of the size of Nats in relation to the rest of the business,” Mr Jones said.He was speaking as the Grid reported a 3 per cent rise in underlying pre-tax profits last year to £474m and raised its forecasts of the contribution expected from its two US businesses, NEES and Eastern Utilities Associates.

The Grid now estimates theywill generate an extra £60m of operating profit by 2003/04.The Latin American growth will see the Grid take a 50 per cent stake in a new long-distance network in Argentina and Chile, Southern Cone Communications The other shareholder is the US operator Williams. The Grid is also paying £55m for 30 per cent of a new “local loop” operator in Santiago, Chile, called Telefonica Manquehue.The Grid and Williams will invest a total of £140m – 80 per cent of it equity – to develop a 2,660-mile broadband network across Argentina and Chile. The final plan is to link the Latin American network into the US.The company already owns 50 per cent of a Brazilian telecoms network, Intelig, which began voice services in January and adds data services in July. Eventually the business is likely to be floated.The two US acquisitions will take the Grid’s net debt to £3.2bn and gearing to more than 100 per cent. But the finance director Stephen Box said the group’s remaining 36 per cent stake in Energis, worth £2.3bn, gave it plenty of firepower to fund another big US acquisition.