The price is initially its selling point – at £49, it is 50 per cent cheaper than a very similar version on offer at a leading designer store.Once you get your hands on this garment it becomes irresistible. That was until the sceptic tanks spent the New Year moving into position on John Major’s lawn and the Prime Minister’s nerve seemed to wobble.
Ministers have been out in force in the past week, shoring up his position, and it is expected that the Euro-enthusiastic Chancellor will tackle the subject with characteristic frankness.. However, relations between the giants were strained by Sugar’s complaints last year that the 350-store group was squeezing Amstrad’s margins unbearably and virtually broke down when the Tottenham chairman started retailing personal computers and faxes through his own mail order catalogues.
Yesterday, at Amstrad’s results, Mr Sugar tried to suppress suggestions of a rift, saying Mr Kalms had only recently wished him a happy birthday. The economic cycle of Germany and France does appear to have synchronised.

The countries co-ordinate their policies to a substantial degree. And in natural resources, the countries are in the same boat. Germany depends more on manufacturing than France; but France is a heavy trading nation none the less.For Britain, it is harder to answer that question. Our resource base, our policy cycle and our economy seems to beat to a more Anglo-Saxon drum than the others in Europe. As the table indicates, Britain lies somewhere between the Continent and the dollarzone. We could as easily apply to the Federal Reserve for membership as to the European central bank.

Given our schizophrenic economy, schizophrenic political attitudes to the conditions for membership of a European single currency are inevitable.Graphic omitted. Lloyds Abbey Life became the latest big insurer to bite the financial bullet over the pensions mis-selling furore by quadrupling its provisions for compensation to £80.1m The big jump in provisions further dented annual profits already battered by the decline in new life and pensions business across the insurance industry. Black Horse Financial Services, the bancassurance side of the group, was hit particularly badly, with profits slumping 41.5 per cent to £67.6m.
But a strong performance from the Lloyds Bowmaker finance arm helped restrict the group’s overall decline in profits to 2.5 per cent.Lloyds Abbey Life as a whole made £315.6m last year, much in line with market expectations. Analysts were cheered by a rise in the dividend from 18p to 19.5p, although Trevor May, at BZW, said that it was unclear what the dividend policy would be as the growth in cash earnings ran out of steam.The shares, which have risen recently on rumours that Lloyds Bank would bid for the 37 per cent of the group it does not own, fell back 8p to 356p. Sir Simon Hornby, chairman, refused to comment on bid rumours.But he sounded a warning that the public was being put off making adequate provision for the future by the wave of bad publicity that has engulfed the insurance industry.He blamed the media in part for “suggesting all life insurance salesmen were crooks”, and said that a return to confidence was essential.

“That is going to happen as customers realise that regulation – and compliance with it – have taken place.”Stephen Maran, chief executive, said Black Horse’s profits were hit disproportionately badly because the sales force underwent an extensive retraining programme and for technical reasons related to insurance accounting assumptions on embedded values.The independent Abbey Life sales force produced better results, seeing a decline of just 8 per cent in pre-tax profits to £123.8m, against Black Horse’s 41 per cent plunge.Mr Maran acknowledged that the bancassurance sales force was less aggressive and less experienced than the Abbey Life one because it was newer to the field and because of the more conservative culture of banking.Lloyds Bowmaker, the finance company where Mr Maran used to be chief executive, saw profits almost double to £73.2m on the back of a big fall in bad debts and a stronger car loans market.Profits at Lloyds Bank Insurance services, which brokes insurance through the bank branches, jumped almost 20 per cent to £70.8m. Black Horse Agencies, the estate agency division, saw its losses rise £3m to £3.7m as the property market refused to recover.Trans Leben, the German insurance subsidiary, lost a further £13.6m last year after a £15.9m loss in 1993.Graphic omitted. Alexanders Holdings, the Edinburgh-based car retailer, saw profit before tax rise to £935,000 for the year to the end of September, up on £512,000 last year. Despite the improvement, the company acknowledged it has some way to go before the margins on its £110m turnover can be deemed acceptable. Turnover last year was £87m.
The company blames the poor margins on tight pricing policies by Ford, its main supplier.The company plans to improve margins by cost-cutting, which will include some job losses among the company’s 385 staff.The company refused to comment on how many staff would be shed, saying this was still under review.Michael Porter, the group’s finance director, said: “Margins have been forced down progressively over the year by manufacturers. Quite a bargain compared to the ones designed by Otto Glanz and Bill Amberg.