LONDON: Home buyers in the U.K. have been advised not to postpone their decisions on mortgage deals in the hope of getting cheaper fixed rate deals. It is possible that the rates may in fact go up in view of a surprise disclosure by Bank of England that core inflation in the country was at its highest for a decade.

Some of the lenders have already raised rates on their best buys while some have withdrawn them in the light of the central bank’s announcement, which almost made it clear there will not be any more rate cuts in the immediate future. The bank had brought the base rates by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.5 per cent.

Banks have said swap rates (rates banks charge to lend money to each other) have risen in recent weeks, which affected the price of some fixed rate deals. Swap rates had come down before the interest rate cut, but in the light of concerns over inflation, these have climbed again. Lenders are therefore forced to revise their best deals.

Newcastle building society this week withdrew its market leading two-year fix at 4.22 per cent, while Abbey replaced its two fixes with deals that were 0.1 to 0.15 percentage points higher. Among other firms, Northern Rock and West Bromwich building societies notified that the deals based on fixed rates can be withdrawn and Portman raised its five-year fix from 4.45 per cent to 4.59 per cent.

The changes may appear inconsequential, but experts pointed out over two years the repayments on a 200,000-pound loan at 4.59 per cent could become more expensive by 1,000 pounds than those on a 4.22 per cent deal.

Savills Private Finance’s director Simon Jones told prospective home buyers: “If you want a cheap two-year fix, buy it now. If you wait a few weeks, it could be more expensive.”

As of now the cheapest two-year deal on the market comes from West Bromwich Building Society, with a rate of 4.15 per cent. However, there is a 599- pound arrangement fee that goes with it and a stipulation that homeowners must buy buildings insurance for two years.

The minutes of the last meeting of the MPC reveal that the governor of the central bank had voted against the rate cut along with Mervyn King, Rachel Lomax, Sir Andrew Large and Paul Tucker. The minutes also indicate that there will not be any further cuts in the near future. The minutes said: “The Committee’s latest projections did not support the current market view that a sequence of interest rate cuts was likely to be needed to meet the [government’s] inflation target in the
medium term.”

The central bank said consumer price inflation rose 2.3 per cent in July from a year ago, the highest annual growth rate since the data series began in 1997. This is the first time that inflation had exceeded the Bank’s 2 per cent target since it adopted the consumer price index as its main inflation measure in December 2003.

150 .uk domain names added every hour, says Nominet

Published : Fri, 19 Aug 2005 13:05
By : Andrew Stead
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LONDON: As many as 150 domain names with .uk extensions are created every hour, indicating that the domain name business in the country is thriving, a study by Nominet, which manages the .uk domain
registrations, says.

The study also indicated that nearly half the web users queried said they were more confident in dealing online with companies which have a U.K. presence.

There is a total of four million .uk web addresses, with 110,000 added every month.

Nominet’s chief executive Lesley Cowley said the U.K. internet industry is experiencing substantial growth and the combination of greater broadband take-up and the established popularity of .uk domain
names demonstrates that the U.K. internet industry is more buoyant than ever.

There is, however, no let-up in the popularity of .com extension, which constitutes majority of web addresses. Verisign, which manages the .com domain registration, said .com constituted 47 per cent of all registered domain names.

It said the total number of .com and .net domain names grew to 44.2 million by the end of the second quarter of 2005. Collectively, country-specific extensions like .de, .uk and .br accounted for 35 per cent of all domain names. As much as 75 per cent of all domain names were registered by businesses and 22 per cent by individuals.

According to a study by the Office of National Statistics, 52 per cent of British homes had access to the internet from home by the end of 2004. Nearly 30 per cent of all net users — about 8.1 million — had broadband connectivity.

MELBOURNE: Australia’s Multiplex Ltd., which is redeveloping Wembley stadium in London, posted a less-than projected profit of A$148.1 million before inter-group accounting transfers for the year ending 30 June up from A$119.8 million for the corresponding previous year.

Profit after the distributions on its SITES hybrid securities was A$132.7 million, against analysts’ projection of $140.7 million.

The company cut its 2006 forecast by 8.5 per cent and made a provision of A$8.6 million on its A$1.2 billion stadium project for fear of running into delays or cost hikes.

Describing the Wembley project as its only remaining loss-making construction project, the company’s chief executive Andrew Roberts said the result is very disappointing and the main cause has been the losses at Wembley. He said: “We had never had an experience where we’ve seen a cost movement like we’ve seen in relation to this project, and we’ve been in the business for 40 years.”

Roberts said despite the losses, the project is very much on track and the company would complete the stadium in time for the March 2006 FA Cup final. The company said it incurred a total loss of A$50 million after tax on Wembley while the development and construction unit had a net loss of A$17 million.

The company had reinforced its bottomline spending A$2.3 billion in November last year to buy office building owner Ronin Property Group and some assets of U.K. property company Chelsfied. This increased its rental income and helped it to offset the losses in the construction unit.

Multiplex said the problem at Wembley has been mainly on account of delays and cost overruns. It needed an extra A$8.6 million to complete the project on time. The project has already cost the company its founder and executive chairman John Roberts, who resigned earlier this year.

NEW YORK: Microsoft Corporation’s web browser Internet Explorer has gained market share it had lost to open source Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox in July, according to Website monitoring firm NetApplications.

NetApplications disclosed Friday that Firefox’s market share fell for the first time since its launch in 2004 from 8.71 per cent in June to 8.07 per cent in July while the share of Internet Explorer grew to 87.2 per cent from 86.56 per cent. Firefox has been gaining strength throughout last year, increasing its share between 0.5 per cent and 1 per cent at the expense of Internet Explorer.

NetApplications collects data on browser usage patterns from nearly 40,000 websites monitored by its HitsLink.com service. The findings have come as a surprise for NetApplications and the company’s chief operating office Dan Shapero said he did not expect the browser’s market share would slow down before it shrunk. He added that Firefox’s growth has been extremely impressive and he cannot tell whether the July fall is indeed the beginning of a downward trend or a one-time anomaly. NetApplications at one time had expected Firefox to command a 10 per cent market share, which it said, will be a milestone for the open source platform.

The third place in the browser market went to Apple’s Safari, which improved its position from 1.93 per cent to 2.13 per cent. Netscape, once the leader in the browser market, had only 1.5 per cent share against an earlier 1.55 per cent. Opera came fifth with a 0.49 per cent share.

Another monitoring firm, W3Schools.com, too recorded a drop saying he number of its visitors using Firefox has went down from a high of 21 per cent in May to 19.8 per cent in July. Internet Explorer versions 5 and 6 together commanded a share of 73.8 per cent in July, up from 71.4 per cent.

In the last few months, Firefox had brought out several security patches to correct some of the flaws and analysts feel these flaws could have damaged the reputation of this open source browser.
However, Internet Explorer had several serious flaws, including the way the browser handles JPEGs and a bug that could allow arbitrary code execution.

Microsoft has revealed that there will be quite a few security updates in its IE version 7, but this is not available to users of Windows 2000. This could prove to be advantageous to Firefox.

LONDON: InterContinental Hotels Group, the world’s largest hotelier, said yesterday it had agreed to allow rival Queens Moat Houses to use its brand name under a franchise agreement for 20 years.

The owners of Queens Moat Houses – US-based investors Goldman Sachs, said half of its 32 Moat Houses will be franchised to InterContinental in line with the new corporate strategy of the group. InterContinental will use its Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza branding on the 16 Moat House properties in exchange for a royalty fee estimated between 3 and 5 percent of profits.

Although it effectively means the end for the brand ‘Queen Moats House’, it is expected to bring in more revenues from the franchise than while being run as Moat Houses.

The ‘Queens Moat House’ brand was in the 70’s and 80’s a very successful brand. However, the fortunes of the UK hotel group changed and a downturn began which led to the near collapse of the business in 1993. With debts having mounted to Ł630 million, the management had no option but to put up the 32-strong estate for sale. Goldman Sach’s property investment wing Whitehall Partners took over the group for around Ł54 million last year.

There is also good reason to believe that the group has put up another 8 Moat Houses for sale and is considering options for the remaining 8. Queens Moat Houses have only two options before them – a franchise similar to the InterContinental deal or a sale of the properties to independent operators.

11 of the franchised Moat Houses will be refurbished and converted into Holiday Inns and two into Crowne Plazas. IGH have yet to decide about the remaining three. The franchised establishments will continue to be managed by Queens Moat Houses.

The Moat Houses on Doncaster, Harrogate and Stratford are among those slated to become Holiday Inns.

For IGH the deal is similar to Stardon Hotels whose five establishments were last month franchised to IGH bringing the total number of InterContinental brand establishments to 227 in the UK.

LONDON: U.K. cable television firm NTL is ready to offer 10Mbps as the standard speed for broadband customers. There will be no additional cost for the service. The company will upgrade its subscribers with 3Mbps service first, which will be completed by the year-end.

NTL is also aiming high. It is confident it can further improve the speeds to 30 Mbps or even 50 Mbps using its cable network or through ADSL2+ DSL broadband connections. Then, there are other services in the pipeline, like high-definition TV, 1000-channel global radio, domestic video conferencing, global gaming, low cost telephony and video e-mail.

The company’s chief executive Simon Duffy feels he will be able to move all its broadband subscribers to 10 Mbps by 2006. NTL’s network connects 97.9 million homes, while it has nearly three million residential customers. The number of broadband customers in the U.K. is 1.4 million.

NTL said its plan will enable a customer to match speed, usage allowance and price to their individual needs. A new user can straightaway log in to 10Mbps connection without any hassles.

“Our broadband services will become amongst the most innovative in the world and certainly well ahead of anything else in the UK,” said Duffy.

In the U.K., broadband constitutes 50.7 per cent of net connections. UK Online, the net service provider owned by Easynet, became the first to offer 8Mbps broadband at the end of 2004, while another provider, Bulldog, upgraded customers from 4Mbps to 8Mbps at no extra cost.

Healthcare giant Bupa has brought out the nursing home business, ANS, in a deal reportedly worth £328 million. The Associated Nursing Services PLC chain runs 44 facilities that are largely purpose-built homes for the elderly. The business, which is owned by brothers Nick and Surindar Dhandsa, is estimated to be Britain’s seventh largest company.

Dr Nick Dhandsa and his two brothers are in possession of about two-thirds of the company, with the rest of the stock being held by family friends and other directors. Mark Ellerby, the managing director of Bupa Care Homes, was elated at beating off stiff competition from Blackstone to acquire the NAS chain; “We are delighted to be able to announce the acquisition of ANS today. ANS is one of the finest care home groups in the UK and a very successful business, and this acquisition will help us to improve the range of care services we offer to our residents,” he said.

ANS chairman Dr Nick Dhandsa set up the homes in 1981. “I got royally hacked off with the NHS and decided to set up a healthcare business,” he commented. They were valued at just over £29 million in 2000, when the family acquired controlling interest in the business. Current estimations place ANS’ annual turnover at £90 million with an operating profit of £30 million.

Bupa will also take on a debt of around £100 million as a part of the deal. “Bupa is the leading player in this sector with a wealth of experience and, like ANS, has a reputation for quality. This is a positive move for our residents and our employees,” Dr. Dhandsa commented. He however expressed a wish to hold on to a cosmetic surgery facility in west London. “We set it up over the course of last year and are looking to keep the business and grow it,” Dhandsa said. “Cosmetic surgery is a good business to be in.”