Gum ceases to be a sticky issue

UNTIL RECENTLY, Tate & Lyle, the world's largest sweeteners business, had underperformed the market for several years. This year, however, a slight recovery has been under way.

WHEN DISASTER strikes, to whom does a company such as Coca-Cola turn? A clued-up firm will already have crisis managers on its books. It's not cheap but the results speak for themselves.

TATE AND LYLE, the world's largest starch and sweeteners business, put a brave face on the effect of the 14-year low in the sugar price on its interim results and warned of forthcoming redundancies.

ALAN SUGAR is to mount a bid for Viglen Technology after the entrepreneur yesterday bought another 8 per cent of the troubled computer assembly group.

Sir: The New Experience Millennium Company argues that its bonus scheme to pay up to pounds 430,000 in bonuses to three directors (Report, 16 September) "will make serving out their contracts more attractive to them".

THE NEWS for slimmers just gets better and better. First there was Olestra, the fat that didn't make you fat; and now Dutch scientists have produced a sugar beet whose sugar tastes sweet but which the body cannot digest.

ANNE McELVOY directs her blast against the "pathological obsession with dumbing down" (Section 2, 7 June) at what she describes as the "smug elites".

IT IS a story full of belly laughs, full of the human spirit, but the National's adaptation of Brassed Off has a dark, forbidding feel - which is perfect for the play's grim subject.

JAM tomorrow has been a regular promise to hungry shareholders of one of the household names of yesteryear, Tate & Lyle. But weary investors may have to wait some time to satisfy their appetites.

Viglen Technology, the personal computer group spun out of Alan Sugar's Amstrad last August, has not exactly covered itself in glory in its brief life on the market. The shares started trading at around 65p but collapsed in November following a profits warning and have been steadily drifting lower ever since. Yesterday they closed another 3p lower at 34.5p following disappointing half-year profits of pounds 2.2m, down from pounds 5.1m the previous year.

Michael Prestage on a county-show talk that led to a multinational honey deal

It has been a difficult year for Tate & Lyle, the sugar and sweeteners group. It has been exposed to fluctuations and excess capacity in its key markets while margins on the group's core commodity product, high- fructose corn syrup, have been the lowest ever recorded.