The relationship between two titans of British consumer electronics Stanley Kalms and Alan Sugar has hit

The relationship between two titans of British consumer electronics, Stanley Kalms and Alan Sugar, has hit frosty waters. Their careers have shadowed each other since they founded their companies, Dixons and Amstrad, and built them up on the stre ngth ofthe electronics boom. The company is forecasting profit before tax of £2.17m for the year to the end of March 1995.More than 70 per cent of sales came from supplying watches and parts for well known brands such as Accurist, Casio and Timex.The company also sells under its own brand, Saga, directly to China, where the company has concessions in 47 department stores.Dailywin plans to open 33 more concessions and five more shops in China to capitalise on what it describes as a fast-growing consumer economy in that country.The company also produces parts for famous up-market Swiss and French watch brands, but refused to say which.Eddie Leung, executive chairman of Dailywin, said: “The listing will provide Dailywin with a strengthened capital base to take advantage of exciting retail opportunities in China.”It will also fund further production facilities.”Established in Hong Kong by Mr Leung in 1978, the company manufactures in the Guangdong province of China.. The new money is to be used to finance the company’s expansion into China.
The company plans to place 30 per cent of its shares with institutions, giving the company a market value of £20m.In the eight months to the end of November the company made £1.5m on a turnover of £18.9m. The directors said the reported figures included several one-off items not expected to recur and forecast a yieldof about 3.8 per cent.. Dailywin Group, a designer and manufacturer of watches based in Hong Kong, is to raise £5m through a listing on the London Stock Exchange before the end of the month. The value of book sales, however, rose by 8.2 per cent to £2.7bn, implying a 5 per cent real increase in the price of the average book.With 83,000 titles published in 1993 in the UK, the British industry is one of the strongest in the world.Because of the growing demand for just-in-time production, the company believes, it is less and less practicable to manufacture books outside their principal market.Bath prints a wide spread of titles, with 32 per cent of its books in the academic area, a quarter retail non-fiction and the rest comprising fiction, reference, education, children’s books and Bibles.Despite the strength of the market, Bath comes to the market with a three-year record of losses, although it bounced back into the black in the 34 weeks to November.In the year to March, pre-tax losses were £659,000 from sales of £32.1m, following losses of £1.93m and £397,000 in the preceding two years.

Dealings begin next Monday in Bath Press, a book printer founded in 1845 by Sir Isaac Pitman, the inventor of shorthand, and now the spa town’s largest employer. Bath prints and binds about 27 million books a year, numbering among its titles Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street Years, Andrew Morton’s Diana – Her True Story and David Attenborough’s The Secret Life of Plants.
Demerged from Pitmans in 1983, Bath is 63 per cent-owned by its management.It will come to the market through a reverse takeover by Diverse Acquisitions, a vehicle set up by company promoter Luke Johnson.Roy Hill, chief executive, who will retain 9.3 per cent of the company after the float, said: “Going public means Bath Press has the financial strength to take advantage of the significant expansion opportunities in the book-manufacturing market.”In 1993, the latest year for which figures are available, unit sales of books increased by 2.2 per cent to 410 million books. All that matters is that French unemployment should rise and fall at the same time as German unemployment.So does there appear to be enough real “real convergence” to merit monetary union? For the rest of Europe – by which one really means Germany and France – it is possible to answer yes. We have to cut our cloth accordingly.”During the year the company acquired a Lincoln-based distributor of cars manufactured in the Far East, including Nissan, Mazda and Hyundai.The company is looking for further opportunities to acquire other franchises to help meet its target of a £250m turnover within five years.

The company also hopes to raise margins to 5 per cent within the same time frame.The company is on the lookout for up-market franchises such as BMW and Mercedes.Mr Porter said: “We are very confident about the future.”Earnings per share are 2.29p, up from 1.25p last year.The total dividend is 1p, up from 0.5p last year.. These include members who have been investors for less than two years or have not had a share account open continuously from December 1992, and borrowers.Another resolution asks the board to identify a way of structuring the deal which benefits widows or widowers who are former joint account holders.Another asks the board to negotiate a paper alternative to the proposed cash payments to members by Lloyds, which will enable members to defer capital gains tax liability.Two resolutions were ruled inadmissable by C&G, one seeking views from borrowers, the other wanting to commission a merchant bank to supply an independent view on the deal.. The battle between Saatchi & Saatchi and its former chairman moved to the High Court yesterday as the troubled advertising group began the first of its legal actions against the deposed Maurice Saatchi. Saatchi & Saatchi is seeking an injunction against its founder and three top executives who quit to set up a rival firm. They are accused of conspiring to damage its business.
Mr Saatchi, Jeremy Sinclair, the former deputy chairman, and the ex-heads of the Saatchi & Saatchi Agency Worldwide, Bill Muirhead and David Kershaw, were not in court.A Saatchi & Saatchi spokesman said fresh writs were served yesterday seeking to widen the terms of the injunction in a bid to stop the team from poaching staff under any circumstances.

Key figures on some big accounts are among staff who have quit in sympathy with Maurice Saatchi. He was fired as chairman in December after a shareholder revolt, and walked out at the start of January after turning down a lesser role.Saatchi was set up by Maurice and his elder brother Charles a quarter of a century ago, and became the world’s biggest advertising firm in the 1980s.As part of yesterday’s hearing, Saatchi & Saatchi accused Mr Saatchi of soliciting his three colleagues for the “New Saatchi Agency” he is setting up. Maurice Saatchi has already replied with a writ of his own, claiming Saatchi broke his contract when itfired him.Although Mr Saatchi was fired and is therefore entitled to compensation – negotiations on his severance package are under way – Saatchi says the others are still technically employees and bound by clauses in their contracts that stop them from working for rival operations.”If the judge finds for us we expect a full trial to come to court this year,” a Saatchi spokesman said. Saatchi will seek “substantial” damages if that happens, but a court case could drag on for years.The proceedings continue today.. Postel, one of the leading pension fund companies, has written to the 12 regional electricity companies, asking them to remove the restriction that prevents any single investor holding 15 per cent or more of the stock. Postel said the limit could act against the interests of shareholders as a whole.

In a letter to all 12 chairmen, David Adie, Postel’s shareholder affairs executive, said: “I see no reason for a further five-year restriction on share ownership in the RECs and believe this restriction to be unwelcome and a distortion of the market.”
He said that while both electricity and water companies were given the protection of Government’s “golden share” and the 15 per cent limit, the limit for the water companies expired after five years.Mr Adie confirmed that Postel is one of the shareholders in Northern Electric to have asked for an extraordinary general meeting to remove the limit following the £1.2bn hostile bid by Trafalgar House. He said: “In the case of Northern it does not mean that we have determined to support the Trafalgar bid, a decision which will be made when all the arguments have been analysed.The Northern EGM is scheduled for next Wednesday, two days before the company’s final defence is expected. The company renewed its attack on Trafalgar House yesterday, reiterating its view that the group was “financially challenged” and calling on any shareholders who had accepted the offer to withdraw. Almost 5 per cent of shareholders are so far known to have accepted.Northern said: “Trafalgar House needs Northern Electric’s sound businesses and strong balance sheet and cash flow to add stability to its own mix of investments, which have an uncertain future and prospects.