Business and City in Brief

COVENTRY TOOL COMPANY CRASHES

Matrix Churchill, one of Coventry's last links with the machine tool industry, has gone into receivership. The company's difficulties came to a head during the Gulf war when its order book was frozen on the orders of the Government. At the time Matrix was in Iraqi ownership.

Matrix lost pounds 6.9m in the 18 months to September last year and another pounds 1.2m in the first eight months of 1992.

LINK DENIED

Societe Generale and Cie Financiere de Paribas denied their companies were set to forge a co-operation partnership with Commerzbank of Germany.

BIDDER BOWS OUT

The mystery bidder for Pacific Horizon Investment Trust has ended negotiations, according to Jupiter Tyndall, the trust's former manager which owns 16 per cent of the shares and 39 per cent of the warrants.

NO SEAT FOR SINGH

The Rev Vivien Singh, a Nationwide Building Society customer, failed to muster enough votes to win a seat on the board at the society's annual meeting.

RELIANCE CHOSEN

India has given Reliance Industries the go-ahead to build a refinery with an annual capacity of 9 million tonnes with participation of a consortium led by C Itoh of Japan.

THYSSEN 'FLAT'

Thyssen Industrie, the engineering unit of the German steelmaker Thyssen AG, said it expected pre-tax profit for the year to September to be flat and next year to be even more difficult.

TAIWAN TRUST BAN

The Taiwan government, enforcing restrictions on Taiwanese investment in China's equity markets, has blocked plans by a local securities consulting company to market shares in a Chinese trust fund.

SUZUKI-VW DEAL

Suzuki and Volkswagen have reached basic agreement for joint development of a mini- car. Suzuki and Seat, the Spanish unit of the VW group, will jointly develop a mini-car to be produced by Seat and sold mainly in Europe.

CANADA RATE CUT

Canadian banks yesterday cut their prime lending rates from 7 per cent to 6.75 Per cent, a 19- year low. The central bank eased its discount rate to 5.50 per cent from 5.61 per cent, the 12th cut in as many weeks.

SONY BEAMING

Sony, the electronics giant, says it has produced the world's first semiconductor laser to emit blue light, a development that can triple the information capacity of a compact disc.

KOREAN CHARGES

(First Edition)

South Korean prosecutors formally charged nine people, including a retired army colonel, with being involved with a multi-million-dollar land swindle.

WORLD MARKETS

NEW YORK: An early loss was reversed in a day of low volumes. By the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 12.43 points at 3,290.04.

TOKYO: Investors bought back oversold issues on hopes of official action to support stocks. The Nikkei average climbed 497.99 to 16,039.94.

HONG KONG: Continued light trading pulled the Hang Seng index down 93.28 to 5,917.16.

SYDNEY: Recovering from a poor start, the All Ordinaries closed 3.5 to the good at 1,610.7.

JOHANNESBURG: Keen institutional buying lifted gold shares by almost 3 per cent. The overall index added 19 points to 3,404.

FRANKFURT: A wave of selling thwarted an early attempt to recover some of the ground lost this week. The DAX index lost 4.85 points to 1,623.37.

PARIS: A late rally took the CAC-40 index to a higher close, up 7.07 points at 1,734.56.

MILAN: Strong selling pressure continued as the MIB lost another 0.37 per cent to 800.

LONDON: Report, page 25.