In a recent report the broker said: Prices are unlikely to rise again in

In a recent report the broker said: “Prices are unlikely to rise again in Europe before October at the earliest in our view but, importantly, if destocking is well managed steel prices may not fall much between then and now.”Meanwhile, Rolls-Royce registered the best performance in the blue-chip index, rising 7.5p to 260p, thanks to Merrill Lynch, which added the stock to its Europe 1 list. The list consists of the US broker’s favourite European stocks. The FTSE 100 closed 6 points lower at 4,886.SABMiller dropped 15p to 813p as ABN Amro urged its clients to reduce their exposure to the brewer before next week’s annual results. Corus shares ended the week on a negative note yesterday after disappointing results from its rival ThyssenKrupp. Thyssen’s results were poor across all its divisions but things at its steel business were particularly weak. The German group also warned that industry growth rates are set to weaken making it inevitable that production cuts are on the way.The latest inventory data shows that steel stocks are at record levels, which can mean only one thing: prices are likely to retreat in the near future. Sir Ken Morrison, the chairman, says that once all Safeway units are converted to the Morrison format, which should be complete by November, the framework will then exist for a significant improvement in performance.Let’s hope he’s right.

While Morrisons has been struggling with the merger, its rivals have been making hay. There’s some evidence to suggest that the recent revival at J Sainsbury has been achieved largely as Safeway’s expense, while the botched nature of the integration gives every reason to think that Morrison, previously a regional retailer, is not up to the job of managing a national chain. Johnson gets off on right foot at DTI Alan Johnson has got off to a cracking start as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Less than a week into the job he’s axed the Prime Minister’s ridiculous decision to rechristen this graveyard of government the Department for Productivity, Energy and Industry, a rebranding exercise which as well as costing a six-figure sum to execute has understandably attracted universal derision This is an extraordinarily encouraging sign. How is Mr Johnson to build on this triumph of decision-making?He might do worse than to recommend the department be abolished altogether, a plan seriously considered by one of his predecessors, Nicholas Ridley, who stunned senior officials in his first day in the job by asking what the department was for.

But then Mr Johnson does have at least one serious task to perform, which is to decide on whether Britain should build a new generation of nuclear power stations. After such a splendid display of common sense, there’s just the remotest possibility we might end up with some decent decision-making.. This ought to have been a marriage made in heaven, but the City is beginning to wonder whether Morrisons can ever get it right. Rather, the bad news was confined to profit margins, which Morrisons had said would show a modest improvement this year but it now transpires will be significantly lower.Bob Stott, the chief executive, thought the announcement so unimportant that he wasn’t even around yesterday to explain it; he was on holiday.

Investors were instead left to figure out for themselves quite how it was that the company had failed to anticipate the duplicated costs which have caused the decline in profit margins.The execution of Morrison’s merger with Safeway has been a textbook study on how not to do it. Yesterday’s warning that the the dual costs of distribution, IT and administration involved in running two supermarket chains were taking longer to unwind than anticipated is just the latest example of the befuddlement that has characterised the integration. It scarcely needs saying that the incentive to provide such pension benefits and to ensure adequate funding is correspondingly reduced.What happens in the US tends to be repeated on these shores a few years later. This is bad news for the fund but great news for United, which saves an estimated $645m a year in pension costs, or about a third of the total savings it needs to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.Indeed it seems such a good wheeze that other airlines are virtually certain to follow suit. The United action threatens a domino effect in which other airlines are forced to seek bankruptcy protection to bring their pension costs down to United’s level.