British Telecom is to broadcast this Thursday’s interim results presentation live on the internet, prompting fears that its website will be overrun by millions of investors or, even worse, sabotaged by hackers. British Telecom is to broadcast this Thursday’s interim results presentation live on the internet, prompting fears that its website will be overrun by millions of investors or, even worse, sabotaged by hackers.
The results are expected to include details of a major restructuring to separate the retail and wholesale arms of BT, a move which will make the presentation of even greater interest to investors.BT’s army of 1.7 million retail investors will be able to log on to both the chief executive Sir Peter Bonfield’s briefing to analysts and a subsequent press conference.A BT source said: “We’re using the technology. It’s to make sure that everything is as open as possible and to make sure everyone has the opportunity to listen.”However, the desire to embrace transparency is not without its dangers. With BT’s interim presentation arguably the most anticipated results briefing in the company’s history, fears are rampant within the company that hackers could abuse the access system, resulting in an embarrassing network meltdown.. Mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse has reported a 62 per cent increase in sales in its first financial report since it floated last summer.

Mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse has reported a 62 per cent increase in sales in its first financial report since it floated last summer.
The group, headed by founder Charles Dunstone, said turnover for the six months to September 23 had jumped from £277.3 million to £447.9 million.Earnings rose by the same percentage to £17.1 million.Mr Dunstone said the figures showed the group was delivering both accelerating growth and a significant increase in profitability.He said Carphone Warehouse was now clearly the largest independent distributor of mobile phones and related services in Europe.The group now has 1,009 stores, including 77 Tandy shops, spread across 14 countries, and is the leading independent in eight of these markets, he said.Mr Dunstone added the group’s underlying margins were improving.Bottom-line pre-tax profits also showed a jump – although this was buoyed by a £13 million one-off profit, which included investment by US internet giant AOL into its internet portal Mviva, and came in at £17.4 million, against £6.6 million last time.The group connected more than 1.4 million customers, an increase of 74 per cent on the same period last year, with growth coming from both subscription and pre-pay mobile sales.The group’s sales are split roughly 50:50 between subscription and pre-pay.Carphone Warehouse added it had clocked up 30,000 users for its MViva portal, in the three months since its launch in June.MViva, which is available in the UK and four other European countries, provides internet services direct to internet-enabled WAP phones, and offers content including news and weather from a range of 120 providers.To boost its store numbers, Carphone invested £68.8 million in new shops, acquisitions and improving its operating systems.It is in the process of converting the Tandy stores, which it bought last year, and has changed 100 stores to its Carphone format, while 17 are left to go.. Europe’s top central bankers intervened in money markets again Monday morning, buying euros to give the ailing currency a needed boost – the third attempt to bolster the euro including two interventions on Friday that failed to boost exchange rates. Europe’s top central bankers intervened in money markets again Monday morning, buying euros to give the ailing currency a needed boost – the third attempt to bolster the euro including two interventions on Friday that failed to boost exchange rates.
The euro immediately shot up above 87 cents to the dollar after languishing around the 86.5 cent level overnight. But as it did on Friday, the euro immediately sank again to hover just below 87 cents.Economists have said the European Central Bank, which manages monetary policy in the 11 European Union countries using the common currency, might have to stage repeated interventions over the coming days to show currency markets it is serious about defending the euro’s value.ECB spokeswoman Regina Schueller would not say how big Monday’s intervention was, but said the ECB acted to stem inflation that can be brought on by a sagging exchange rate.Like last week, the ECB acted alone without cooperation from the United States or Japan, Schueller said.But by midmorning there were already signs the Bank of Japan could hop on board.”We will continue to carefully watch developments in the market and will cooperate if necessary,” said Japan’s vice finance minister for international affairs Haruhiko Kuroda, speaking in Tokyo.Economists have criticized the solo shots at intervention, saying that leaving out other central banks pares down the number of euros that can possibly be traded and robs the intervention of extra firepower.The recent interventions come in marked contrast to the ECB’s first intervention, a coordinated strike on September 22 that marshalled the cooperation of the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the central banks of England and Canada.The euro’s retreat on Friday was fueled by the afternoon release of US economic figures that showed better-than-expected unemployment figures and an increase in US factory orders, two factors renewing investor confidence in the US economy.The anemic euro, which has lost a quarter of its value since its January 1999 launch, is becoming a big problem in Europe because it makes imports more expensive. That could eventually spill over into higher price tags at the corner store for the region’s 291 million people.Inflation in the region peaked at a six-year high of 2.8 per cent in September, well above the ECB’s target of 2 per cent. And ECB President Wim Duisenberg said last week it will take longer than the expected three to four months for inflation to fall back to the 2 per cent level.. Speculation that the Government is planning to raise its forecasts for the long-term growth potential of the economy, allowing it to justify massive tax cuts, will be fuelled today with the publication of a report into UK productivity.

Speculation that the Government is planning to raise its forecasts for the long-term growth potential of the economy, allowing it to justify massive tax cuts, will be fuelled today with the publication of a report into UK productivity.
Improving productivity is seen in Whitehall as the key to achieving higher long-term growth rates and Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, is keen to make improved productivity the Treasury’s key challenge over the next Parliament.The Treasury has ruled out changing its assumption about the growth potential of the economy before either this week’s Pre-Budget Report or the full Budget in March but civil servants are optimistic that a step-change is under way. This could allow the Treasury to review its growth forecasts before a summer General Election.The current assumption, that the economy can only grow at 2.25 per cent a year without triggering inflation, is used to calculate the public finance forecasts and the amount that the Government can give back to the electorate in terms of higher spending or tax cuts. A change to this would require a reassessment of the productivity of the average British worker, which has only grown by about 2 per cent a year over the last few decades.A senior Treasury official said today’s report would contain clues to the Government’s thinking. “There’s an interesting question about what is happening to the economy that relates to productivity and the New Economy,” he added.Mr Brown is anxious to see the UK copy the example of the US where heavy investment in information technology and telecoms equipment has helped productivity accelerate to its highest level for almost a quarter of a century.Today’s paper is expected to be an update on progress in the UK but the Treasury official said in terms of trend growth it would be “foolish to publish a running commentary”.Some economists, including members of the Monetary Policy Committee such as DeAnne Julius and Sushil Wadhwani, believe the UK is on the brink of achieving higher rates of productivity.Roger Bootle, managing director of independent consultants Capital Economics, said recent business investment figures raised the prospect of some improvement on the “dismal” performance of recent years..

There are two things certain about Gordon Brown’s fiscal arithmetic, as he prepares for his trickiest pre-Budget report so far. One is that his surplus is larger than he forecast in the spring; the other is that he will not tell us the half of it. Any Chancellor likes to keep a few shots in the locker in the run up to an election, even one as adept as Mr Brown at the techniques of pre- and re-announcement. There will, after all, be another Budget show to finance before the earliest likely date for the general election But this time there is another reason for caution.

The bigger the surplus, the harder it is for Mr Brown to win the argument that he cannot afford to do much for the motorist. There are two things certain about Gordon Brown’s fiscal arithmetic, as he prepares for his trickiest pre-Budget report so far. One is that his surplus is larger than he forecast in the spring; the other is that he will not tell us the half of it. Any Chancellor likes to keep a few shots in the locker in the run up to an election, even one as adept as Mr Brown at the techniques of pre- and re-announcement.