Another board meeting may be held on Monday

Another board meeting may be held on Monday.Mr Wasserstein wants to increase the momentum behind the planned IPO after most partners at the two meetings signalled they were broadly behind the plan. The committee is close to Mr Wasserstein.The memo was sent after meetings between senior employees, including a gathering in New York on Tuesday of working partners and a board meeting in Paris on Wednesday. Bruce Wasserstein, the chief executive of Lazard, is on the brink of reaching an agreement with partners in the investment bank to push ahead with a flotation after months of internal wranglings about the terms of the initial public offering.
Mr Wasserstein has won “near-unanimous support” from the working partners, according to a memo sent by Lazard’s management committee on Wednesday. Apart from Belfast, these also include Luton, Cardiff and Stockholm Skavsta in Sweden.Luton will receive a boost next Monday when Ryanair, Europe’s biggest no-frills airline, starts operating nine routes from the airport. EasyJet, the rival low-cost carrier, has also increased flights from Luton..

The group said passenger numbers at the airport were up by 12 per cent in the first half of the year due to expansion by low-cost airlines and charter operators and should grow further when Continental begins services.Overall, passenger numbers increased by 9 per cent at TBI’s European airports. Barry Gardiner, a junior Northern Ireland minister, described Continental’s investment as “evidence the peace process is paying real dividends”, adding that the province was now seen as a safe destination for tourists.Government officials emphasised that it was quite normal to offer airlines financial help to launch new routes from regional airports, pointing out that the air route development fund had also been used to fund new services from Scotland.Continental will operate daily from Belfast during the summer months, cutting down to four services a week during the winter.The arrival of the US carrier is a boost for TBI, the operator of Belfast International. Details of the aid emerged yesterday as Continental saidit would begin operating a daily service from Belfast International airport to New York Newark from May next year.
Continental said it was confident of generating strong demand from business and leisure passengers on the route. The American carrier Continental Airlines is to receive more than £1m from the UK taxpayer in return for launching the first transatlantic service between Northern Ireland and the US. Performance standards continue to lag with all targets missed again in the first quarter of the current financial year. However the organisation said yesterday that it had improved since May and had made “real and substantial gains” in the reliability of its first and second-class letter services..

Baroness Margaret Prosser, the former deputy general secretary of the Transport & General Workers’ Union, is joining the board, bringing the number of non-executives to seven.Royal Mail is on course to achieve its three-year turnaround which involves achieving a £400m operating profit by 2005. It was a position created by Royal Mail’s chairman Allan Leighton, to ensure there was hands-on experience of running a postal service at the top of the organisation since neither he nor Mr Crozier had any background in the industry.The boardroom shake-up also saw the appointment of a new non-executive director. These deferred bonuses will be paid this year, provided Royal Mail achieves four of the 15 targets in the final quarter, which runs from January to March.Mr Crozier will take over Mr Toime’s responsibility for Parcelforce, and his former position as deputy chairman will not be filled. His pay last year was made up of £500,000 in base salary and a £150,000 bonus, representing half the amount he was entitled to. In common with other Royal Mail executives, Mr Toime agreed to defer half of his bonus to this year in light of the organisation’s failure to hit any of its 15 performance targets. In May he was stripped of responsibility for the letters business after Royal Mail’s chief executive Adam Crozier decided to take direct control and then last month he was replaced as chairman of Royal Mail’s management committee, again by Mr Crozier.Mr Toime was relieved of his responsibility for the letters division after the consumer body Postwatch disclosed that up to 16 million letters were going missing and a Channel 4 documentary aired allegations of theft by postal workers.Observers said that Mr Toime, whose responsibilities since May have been limited to the parcels business, had been living on “borrowed time” and had, in effect, been ousted.He was paid £650,000 last year and is on a one-year contract which will be honoured.

The Royal Mail executive who was in charge of its letters division last year when the organisation ran into a storm over lost and stolen post, quit yesterday with a pay-off worth up to £650,000. Mr Jenkins said that losses in the first half of this year rose to £533,000 from £273,000 in the same period last year The market is run by his children, Jonathan and Emma Bidders want them to be replaced, market sources said.. John Jenkins, the chairman and founder of Ofex who owns a 55 per cent stake in the company, signalled last month that he plans to retire soon. Ofex lost its biggest member, Weetabix, after it was taken over last year.One of the main stumbling blocks in the negotiations with possible bidders was the role of the Jenkins family, who created and managed Ofex, market sources said. It is more difficult to raise money on Ofex.Ironically, Ofex is listed on AIM – the flotation raised £1.7m last year – but the number of companies trading on its market has declined from 170 then to about 136 Many have moved to AIM or withdrawn their shares.