Business and City in brief

Manx bank report to be published

Renewed calls for compensation for 4,000 investors hit by the pounds 42m collapse of the Savings and Investment Bank on the Isle of Man 10 years ago are expected to follow yesterday's decision, by the island's High Court, to allow publication of a report thought to be critical of government banking supervision at the time.

Shell alliance

Shell, the oil giant, is planning a merger of its worldwide interests in polyolefins, a petrochemical used by the plastics industry, with Montecantini, owned by Italy's Ferruzi to create a business with an annual turnover of about dollars 2bn.

Pensions survey

Members of the public will be surveyed as part of the Pension Law Review Committee's effort to discover the full range of reaction to its consultation document on the law and regulation of occupational pension schemes.

Shearson settles

Shearson Lehman Brothers has settled US Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it had violated federal regulations on the trading of stock under dividend reinvestment plans. Shearson agreed to settle without admitting or denying allegations.

SKB sues in US

SmithKline Beecham is suing Rohm and Haas Company in the US for indemnification and cost recovery in connection with the clean-up of the Whitmoyer Laboratories superfund site in Myerstown, Pennsylvania. The US Environmental Protection Agency has estimated the cost of the clean- up at dollars 125m.

Unilever sale

Unilever has agreed to sell Marine Harvest International, its salmon farming business, to MariFarms, a US aquaculture company, for about dollars 39m ( pounds 20m) cash.

Solicitors' cash

London's top 35 firms of solicitors saw a slight improvement in revenues to a total of pounds 2bn in the year to April 1992, according to a survey published by Legal Business magazine today.

ICL contract

(First Edition)

The computer company ICL has secured a pounds 4m contract from British, French and Belgian railways to install check-in systems for passengers using Channel tunnel train services.

World markets

New York: Investors kept a wary eye on currency markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 3.51 points at 3,315.70.

Tokyo: The Nikkei average put on 171.82 points to 18,116.52, but volume was extremely thin.

Hong Kong: An afternoon rebound wiped out early losses for the Hang Seng index to end 4.77 points firmer at 5,637.9.

Sydney: Narrow-range trade took the All Ordinaries index up 5.4 points to 1,511.8.

Johannesburg: Gold and industrial shares both moved ahead, though the former gave up some gains. The overall index closed 17 points up at 3,154.

Frankfurt: The Bundesbank's failure to cut interest rates further drove the DAX index down 5.8 points to 1,578.76.

Paris: An edgy bourse failed to sustain a rally as the CAC-40 index slipped 7.04 to 1,852.74.

Milan: The market jumped nearly 4 per cent as investors saw exporting companies gaining from lira devaluation.

London: Report, page 27.