GERMANY'S COMMERZBANK yesterday said that its management board had agreed to accept the French government's offer of a 4 per cent stake in the planned privatisation of Credit Lyonnais. Martin Kohlhaussen, Commerzbank's chief executive, said the two banks planned to co-operate on operations in France, Germany and internationally, with the possibility of pulling CL into Commerzbank's existing network.

City People

BUY

AN UNUSUAL crowd is sipping champagne on the 49th floor of the Commerzbank tower. Bankers in sober suits ogle the waitresses: leggy, under-dressed young things straight out of a men's magazine. In the middle of the melee , an elderly woman fixes her piercing blue eyes on the cameras, while the PR people work on the assembled journalists, each hack clutching a little gift package tied with a pink ribbon. "Share our sexy business," urges a poster at the entrance.

CABLE & WIRELESS, the UK's second largest telecoms company, yesterday said it was raising pounds 3.8bn to give it extra financial muscle by effectively using its stake in One2One as collateral.

A SELECT group of City secretaries stand to make about pounds 120,000 each from what must be the ultimate in staff incentive schemes. Their top boss, on the other hand, is expecting to pick up a cool pounds 100m from the same deal.

THE CITY press corps faced a vexing dilemma on Tuesday night: whether to go to the German beer tasting at Commerzbank, or the French wine tasting at AXA.

SHARES OF property group Greycoat soared yesterday on news of a 29 per cent increase in net asset value to 283p per share, helping the company in its fight against a pounds 218m takeover attempt by rival Delancey Estates, controlled by George Soros.

ONE2ONE, the mobile phone network currently up for sale, yesterday tried to claw back some of the ground it has lost to its rivals in the competitive mobile phone market by slashing its call rates.

VEBA, Germany's top utility, sold its 10.2 per cent stake in Cable & Wireless at a profit of pounds 900m, raising funds to invest in its own phone ventures. ABN Amro and Cazenove placed the shares at 735p each, an 11.5 per cent discount on the previous week's price of 830.5p.

GERMANY'S Commerzbank, has let it be known in the City that it is ready to offer up to pounds 24 a share for a majority stake in Robert Fleming, a price that would value the firm, one of the few remaining independent British investment banks, at more than pounds 4bn.

PROMPTED BY BNP's hostile bid for Paribas/Societe Generale, a Parisian mole has told me the following tale.

ARE LEISURE shares at last ending their long, debilitating bear run? The sudden awareness of the neglected value lurking on the market undercard, plus the inevitable takeover whispers, helped the run-down sector score a 3.3 per cent gain on a day most shares were in retreat.

TRADING in the euro rose in the first five days of the new currency's existence. Some firms reported a fivefold increase in the size of average trades as concern that computer systems wouldn't cope with the change faded.