However banking sources said that those firms in the rescue consortium were clearly the

However, banking sources said that those firms in the rescue consortium were clearly the ones with the biggest exposure.Barclays, understood to have been with Mr Meriwether since the start in 1994, was represented at the meeting by Tom Kolaris, Barclays’ chief executive for the Americas, who was in constant contact with chief executive Martin Taylor. Mr Davies said yesterday that Mr Meriwether’s fund had “quite large positions” on Liffe, the London Futures and Options market.Banking sources said that “anybody who was anybody” would have had some exposure to Mr Meriwether. “It is high-quality collateral, G7 government bonds.”Mr Meriwether was chairman of Salomon Brothers, where he is credited with inventing the technique known as arbitrage, before he set up on his own four years ago with a team which included two Nobel Prize-winning mathematicians, Myron Scholes and Robert Merton, and a former vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve.The fund specialised in borrowing heavily to fund big bets on government bond markets. However, senior banking sources said that although its share of the bail-out could reach $300m, virtually all of its lending to Long-Term Capital was fully secured.”UBS was a hedge fund investor, Barclays was not,” said one senior banking source last night. Similar steps were taken in Switzerland by the Swiss Banking Commission.Barclays said it did not expect “a negative impact on its own profit and loss account” because of LTCM. The bank has had to write off its entire Sfr905m (pounds 400m) investment in the fund.Following the disclosure that Barclays was participating in the rescue, the Financial Services Authority ordered 55 City institutions to provide details of their hedge fund exposure.

The company named Anthony Coleman (pictured), former finance director of Yorkshire Water, as chairman. Ionica warned that any deal was likely to be struck at less than the company’s current share price. Ionica revealed that losses for the year to March quadrupled to pounds 173m. In the quarter to June, losses deepened to pounds 43m from pounds 30m in the same period of the previous year Ionica shares closed down 0.5p at 22p.. DIAGEO yesterday signalled further job cuts in addition to the 3,000 already announced, though none will be in the UK. Quarter- on-quarter growth was left unchanged at 0.5 per cent, while the year-on- year rate was revised up 0.4 per cent to 2.6 per year. Manufacturing growth over the quarter was revised up from 0.1 per cent to 0.3 per cent.Outlook, page 19.

IONICA, the troubled wireless telecoms company, yesterday revealed it is in talks with a strategic investor which could lead to it being rescued “in the near future.” Ionica said some holders of its pounds 300m of bonds had indicated they were willing to exchange the bonds for shares in the investor, thereby opening the way for a takeover. For example, under ESA, mineral exploration is classified as “investment” not “expenditure”, as is computer software. Other changes were designed to improve the reliability of official data, for example by helping eliminate data gaps and double- counting.Although the new accounts make interesting reading for economic historians, the figures are unlikely to have substantial implications for today’s policymakers, according to City economists.Second-quarter GDP growth was little altered by the revisions. The so-called European System of Accounts (1995) is different to the current UK system in numerous ways. The cumulative effect of the changes meant that 1997 GDP, calculated at current market prices, was more than pounds 15bn higher than previously thought.Recent data on the UK’s balance of payments was sharply revised. The current account deficit in the first quarter of the year, for example, was revised down sharply from pounds 3.2bn to pounds 0.5bn. In the second quarter of the year, the current account recorded a surplus of pounds 600m, to the surprise of City analysts.Dharshini David at HSBC Securities said: “This does suggest that the the Asian crisis and the strong pound did not have quite as much of a detrimental impact as previously thought.”The ONS said there were a variety of reasons for the changes, including the legal requirement to make UK national accounts more like those of our European partners.