Two directors of Wickes, the troubled DIY group, have been suspended as part of the investigations into accounting errors that led to an over- statement of the group's profits, writes Nigel Cope.

King's Cross - the fight for compensation: Victim tells of harrowing years battling against London Transport's lawyers

The following notes of judgments were prepared by the reporters of the All England Law Reports.

IAN MacKINNON

Every six minutes a lot of lawyers are a lot richer. Brian Cathcart looks at what they charge and how they justify it

THE former head of a Bermuda-based insurance company that went into liquidation four years ago is stepping up his campaign against accountants Coopers & Lybrand, which made him personally bankrupt to the tune of dollars 19m ( pounds 12.6m).

TERRY VENABLES, coach of the England soccer team, has moved a stage further in his attempt to sue Tottenham Hotspur, the publicly quoted football club - to cries of foul by its chairman Alan Sugar.

Allen & Overy is to open an office in Frankfurt next month, while another City firm, Herbert Smith, has announced plans to open an office in Shanghai.

It's easy to be cynical about the City Disputes Panel, an independent body formed yesterday with backing from some top- drawer City names to provide practitioners with an alternative to the courts in resolving commercial disputes. Worthy though the aim is, attempts at independent arbitration and mediation of this sort in the past have nearly always ended in failure. Just look at what happened to poor old Sir John Cuckney's campaign to knock City heads together over the Maxwell collapse; it's hard to recall a single success for Sir John in the two years he's been at it.

IT IS almost exactly a year since William Foust, Hoover's managing director, and two other senior Hoover managers lost their jobs over the company's disastrous handling of its free flights sales promotion.

THE London Stock Exchange's guidelines aimed at curbing insider dealing received a reluctant welcome from the City yesterday, as sceptics acknowledged that a move towards more formal relations between investors and companies was inevitable.

TERRY VENABLES' appointment as the new manager of England, originally scheduled for today, was postponed under the threat of legal action from Alan Sugar. The Football Association's intention was to confirm that Venables had the job yesterday, prior to an inaugural press conference at Wembley this afternoon, but their plans were scrapped late on Tuesday, after Sugar had thrown a spanner in the works.

Section 13A of the Arbitration Act 1950, as inserted by the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990, empowered an arbitrator to dismiss a claim for inordinate and inexcusable delay even where the delay complained of occurred before 1 January 1992, when the new provision came into force.

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR have applied to have a company central to Terry Venables' business dealings wound up. The petition against Edennote, the company used by Venables when he bought into Tottenham with Alan Sugar in 1991, will be heard next month.