And I want them to do the very best they can first

“And I want them to do the very best they can first.”President Clinton left Washington yesterday for a summit of world leaders in Denver without his top advisor on the tobacco negotiations, Bruce Lindsey, who stayed behind to monitor the talks. Punitive damages are awarded to punish and deter wrongful behaviour.In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, President Bill Clinton urged tobacco companies and anti-smoking forces to stay at the negotiating table until they reached an agreement. However, he did not preclude personally intervening if he is convinced the two sides have exhausted all hope of reaching a deal.“I don’t want to rule in or out what I might say, but I want these parties to come to me and say, `This is where we are. The states are demanding that the industry agree to be punished for past actions, that it pay compensatory and punitive damages for smoking-related injuries and that it agree to allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate cigarettes as a drug.Sources close to both the state attorneys general and the tobacco industry said they doubted a deal would be reached until late last night at the soonest, and some said they thought it might be today.Asked how talks were progressing, Richard Scruggs, a Mississippi lawyer assisting several of the states, replied, “The horse is still breathing.”The main negotiator representing the anti-smoking, American health organisations, Matthew Myers, was absent Thursday to attend a funeral.The Connecticut Attorney-general Richard Blumenthal said two areas of disagreement remained.“One, details as to the terms of any final settlement protecting public health.” Blumenthal said. We hope to present an agreement in principle to the White House,” said Scott Harshbarger, the Massachusetts Attorney- general.
Talks between tobacco industry representatives and the state attorneys general have been going on since early April.

The negotiations are aimed at a broad settlement of the huge legal claims against the industry in return for some form of increased regulation and curbs on advertising and marketing of tobacco products.Forty states have sued the industry to recoup the costs of treating sick smokers. “And the larger issues relating to assuring that people’s rights are protected to sue the industry for the harm that’s done,” he added.The main tobacco companies Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, and Brown & Williamson declined to comment on the negotiations.The White House has taken a keen interest in the talks but has been careful not to appear to be running them.Negotiators have considered turning over an incomplete proposal to the White House and asking it to resolve the contentious issue of whether the industry would pay so-called punitive damages, according to sources close to the talks. Negotiators for American states and the tobacco industry were locked in talks yesterday to try and resolve contentious issues and reach a landmark tobacco settlement of lawsuits by the end of the week

“We’re very optimistic. A source close to MDIS said former management had taken on contracts which they were not qualified to service, but which they booked as profit.”As they struggled to service them, costs started soaring. MDIS has minimal cash outflow because of it,” the source said.Mr Klein said the contract announced yesterday with IT giant Fujitsu, which is buying a 36 per cent interest in MDIS’s software Chess for $25m, showed the fundamentals of the group were sound “It is a major transaction,” he said.. “I clearly understand the responsibility rests with me, but the past is behind us,” he said.The group will make a provision to cover creditors, redundancy costs and old contracts drawn up in the early 1990s in its next set of figures.MDIS expects “a sustained improvement in operating performance” this year. The group, which has had a string of profit warnings and management oustings in the past year, was floated at 260p in March 1994.
John Klein, chief executive, said it would take 12 to 18 months to turn around.

The organisation has called for a pounds 2bn increase in personal taxes in next month’s budget to curb inflation.The balance of firms reporting total order books below normal has fallen from 8 per cent in May to 3 per cent this month. Interest rates have gone up twice since Labour came to power.According to the survey, the balance of companies reporting export order books below normal was 20 per cent in June compared with 24 per cent in May and 23 per cent in April.During the period the survey was conducted, 22 May to 11 June, sterling averaged $1.635 and DM2.796.The CBI’s director of economic analysis, Sudhir Junankar, said: “Despite the small revival in export orders this month, sterling’s strength continues to have a dampening effect on export demand and manufacturers’ output growth expectations have weakened for the third successive survey.”The figures will deal a blow to the CBI’s campaign for higher taxes, rather than higher interest rates, to keep the lid on inflation. McDonnell Information Systems, one of the UK’s worst-performing flotations of recent years, looks set to launch a rescue rights issue in the next few weeks after the group warned software costs would lead to “very substantial losses” for 1996 and said it was seeking a refinancing “as a matter of urgency”

Shares in the group plunged 18 per cent to 28p. The survey also shows that price expectations are the lowest for nearly a year..

They focus on years one and two and those assumptions have hardly changed.”The new basis of calculation puts the PSBR pounds 0.5bn higher in the current fiscal year and pounds 3.25bn higher next year.Comment, page 23. The Confederation of British Industry yesterday undermined its own argument for lower interest rates by announcing that export orders have recovered slightly this month. The employers’ organisation has argued that higher base rates will further strengthen the pound, thereby making British manufactured goods less competitive in export markets.
But the CBI’s latest monthly trends survey shows exports picked up in June with a smaller balance of firms reporting a decline in exports than in previous months. Everyone knows the plans for three and four years ahead are simply fantasy. For the next two years, the Treasury uses its actual forecasts for the short-term growth in GDP rather than an estimate of long-term trend growth.One economist said: “This is largely an exercise in public relations, designed for the consumption of people other than in the City.

That would increase public borrowing by pounds 4.25bn over the five year forecasting period.The final change will see the Government using market average forecasts for future interest rates rather than an estimate by the Treasury, which might lay the Government open to charges of political interference.The changed forecasts are retrospective and will be revised again on 2 July to incorporate the changes announced in the mini-Budget.The change in the long-term GDP growth trend raised eyebrows in the City yesterday, where economists said recent evidence suggested a higher growth rate was sustainable without a threat to inflation.Economists questioned the relevance of the change, which only takes effect from 1999 onwards. By restricting the predicted gains to cash raised immediately from the discovery of an error or fraud, rather than including a figure for indirect effects such as deterrence, the saving is reined back to pounds 4.9bn.Other changes included a decision not to include future privatisation proceeds in economic forecasts, a measure expected to increase the PSBR by pounds 4.5bn over the next five years, and the use of a flat unemployment assumption, rather than the guess about future trends in the jobless rate that Mr Clarke introduced for the first time last year. It means the Budget arithmetic will be based on financial conventions which are open, transparent and accountable.”In a bid to create more openness at the Treasury, Gordon Brown asked the National Audit Office to scrutinise the changed assumptions and say if it considered them reasonable.Sir John Bourn, head of the NAO, said yesterday: “While the assumptions adopted by the Chancellor are not the only ones which could be reconciled with the evidence, in my opinion they have been arrived at systematically on the basis of the available data and by methods which interpret it in a reasonable way.”The key changes in the assumptions were a revision downwards of the Treasury’s long-trend growth forecast from 2.5 per cent to 2.25 per cent and a reduction in the estimated proceeds from Kenneth Clarke’s “spend to save” anti-fraud programme.That initiative predicted savings of pounds 6.7bn could be generated by spending an extra pounds 800m on measures to eliminate errors and fraud from social security claims. Gordon Brown is certain to use the new figures, which were yesterday given a seal of approval by the independent National Audit Office, to paint the previous Conservative government’s assumptions as over-optimistic. They are expected to give him ammunition for turning down excessive demands from spending departments and a justification for raising taxes.
Presenting the changed figures and the NAO endorsement as a victory for open government, Mr Brown said: “Budgets must be built on honest foundations.