Business News In Brief

Frogmore Estates is buying Axa Equity & Law Life's portfolio of 109 properties for pounds 92.2m. The properties generate an annual rental income of pounds 9m. Frogmore will retain nine properties as investments and sell the rest over the next two years. Frogmore will raise pounds 25m via a vendor placing of 4.59 million new ordinary shares and finance the balance from bank facilities. It also has the exclusive right for the next few months to negotiate to buy another 56 properties, with an annual rental income of pounds 5.9m, for up to pounds 60m.

Shares in Renishaw dived from 342.5p to 280p after the electronic equipment group warned pre-tax profits for the year to 30 June were expected to fall to pounds 17.5m, compared with pounds 20.1m for the previous year, as a result of the strength of the pound. Sales for the year were pounds 81.3m, a 6 per cent rise. Sales would have been up 14 per cent and profits pounds 4.5m higher if exchange rates had remained at a similar level through the year.

Lincoln Independent, the financial advisers, has been fined pounds 75,000 and ordered to pay pounds 10,000 costs by the Personal Investment Authority for failing to clear up its personal pension mis-selling cases according to the regulator's guidelines. The problems at surfaced after an inspection visit by the regulator's pensions monitoring team. The company, formerly called Laurentian Independent Financial Planning, was taken over by Lincoln in 1995.

Crown Products Group will show a substantial loss in the first half of 1997. It added that an expected return to profit in the second half would not outweigh the loss. Among measures being taken, the company has made an unspecified number of redundancies at Hunkdory, the domestic gift subsidiary. Plexus, the group's playground equipment business will be sold.

Scottish Power has appointed Mike Kinski as chief executive of power distribution and water operations with overall responsibility for Southern Water, Manweb and Power Systems. Finance director Ian Russell will become chairman of Scottish Telecom.