Business and City in Brief

CLOWES GIVEN LEAVE TO APPEAL

Peter Clowes, founder of the collapsed Barlow Clowes financial empire who started a 10- year jail sentence for fraud in February, has been given leave to challenge his convictions.

Clowes was found guilty in February of 18 offences of theft and making false statements involving millions of pounds of investors' money.

LOSING INTEREST

The Inland Revenue lost its appeal to the House of Lords that it should not have to pay pounds 6.7m in interest charges relating to 'double taxation' of the Woolwich Building Society in 1986.

OECD inflation Inflation in the OECD area eased to 4.5 per cent in the year to May, from 4.6 per cent in April.

ROVER INVESTMENT

Rover is investing pounds 200m to create a Japanese-style car factory at its Cowley site in Oxford. It hopes to be producing 110,000 cars a year at Cowley by 1994 compared with 51,000 now.

BANK AMERICA

Bank America reported net income of dollars 240m ( pounds 125m) or dollars 0.63 per share in the second quarter, after paying dollars 181m in charges related mostly to its merger in April with Security Pacific. Last year, its net income prior to the merger was dollars 272m.

NEW VENTURE

Siemens is forming a joint venture with Philips Electronics to control the latter's cable and optical fibre unit, prior to an eventual takeover of the unit by Siemens.

CAR TALKS

BMW has confirmed reports that it is talking to Mercedes- Benz over a possible joint venture to develop technical machinery and components. It denied a report that its chairman will retire at the end of the year.

SAATCHI SETTLES

Saatchi & Saatchi is to pay dollars 9.5m ( pounds 4.9m) plus interest to unnamed American investors in settlement of a five-year-old legal action in the US. The action was sparked by a sharp fall in the company's share price.

OIL STUDY

BP and eight other oil companies have launched a pounds 1.4m study into the feasibility of a joint development of four large North Sea oil and gas fields.

US BALANCE

The US electronics industry's balance of trade with the world worsened by dollars 1.65bn to a dollars 757m deficit in the first quarter, according to the American Electronics Association. The deficit with Japan grew by almost 8 per cent to dollars 4.6bn.

WORLD MARKETS

NEW YORK: Worries about the US economy pushed the Dow Jones Average down 47 points in early trading but it recovered to close down 28.64 at 3,303.00.

TOKYO: The Nikkei average plunged 663.59 to 15,884.48 on fears over the economy and poor corporate earnings.

HONG KONG: New problems in Sino-British talks over the Hong Kong airport project touched off a 141.57-point fall by the Hang Seng to 5,986.49.

SYDNEY: Despite more gains by gold stocks, the biggest fall in three months left the All Ordinaries 24.6 lower at 1,604.9.

FRANKFURT: Investors dumping shares following last week's interest rate rise sent the DAX index diving 52.99 points, or 3.1 per cent, to 1,649.67.

PARIS: The CAC-40 index clawed back some losses but still finished near a year's low at 1,770.3, down 33.88 points.

MILAN: Hectic trading following the assassination of Judge Paolo Borsellino drove the MIB down 5.8 per cent to 809.

LONDON: Report, page 23.