At 43 Mr Clarke is understood to be eager to shake up Bass which has been viewed as a solid but unexciting company

At 43, Mr Clarke is understood to be eager to shake up Bass, which has been viewed as a solid but unexciting company.Fresh from selling its brewing interests to Belgium’s Interbrew for £2.3bn, Bass’s board is keen to concentrate on its hotel interests. As well as giving Bass a pure hotel focus, a demerger of its bars and restaurants would give Bass shareholders something to toast. Analysts estimate the demerged company would be worth around £3bn. With Bass’s market capitalisation standing at £6.1bn and its hotel business valued at £6bn, the company’s break-up value stands at over £9bn.While the idea of a demerger has been discussed at boardroom level, it is unlikely to go ahead until early 2001. This is because Bass is also in the process of selling its portfolio of 900 unbranded pubs through investment bank Schroder Salomon Smith Barney. The sale is expected to raise between £500m and £900m and is thought to have caught the eye of Japanese investment bank Nomura, venture capital-backed Punch Taverns and quoted pub company Enterprise Inns.However, Bass isn’t the only company off-loading its pubs estate.

Whitbread is selling 3,000 pubs with a price tag of £1.5bn and the City is expecting Scottish & Newcastle to review its pub holdings shortly. Analysts predict that between 15 per cent and 20 per cent of Britain’s 65,000 pubs are either on the market or are likely to be for sale in the next few years.Nigel Popham, analyst at Teather & Greenwood, said: “It is entirely possible that Bass will demerge its branded pubs and restaurants. But there is an element of uncertainty given all the pubs on the market.”Mr Popham added: “The impression I get is that Bass is keen on hotels but cooler on pubs It all boils down to growth prospects. Hotels can be expanded internationally whereas pubs and bars are an old-fashioned industry with few prospects for growth.”. American Express and Mastercard have been ordered by a judge to identify to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) their customers who hold cards issued through the offshore tax havens of Antigua, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands.

American Express and Mastercard have been ordered by a judge to identify to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) their customers who hold cards issued through the offshore tax havens of Antigua, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands.
The two international credit card companies are required to hand over records of those clients’ accounts under the terms of the court order, which is part of a massive crackdown on tax evasion.The judgement is unprecedented and is causing major concern for the big credit companies as it involves card accounts held in jurisdictions outside the US.The ruling follows evidence that mainstream credit and debit cards issued by offshore banks have been extensively used for money laundering and tax evasion.According to the Miami- based Offshore Alert newsletter, the IRS took court action after the former Cayman Island banker John Mathewson turned “supergrass” and revealed how credit and debit cards were used in tax scams.Mathewson, 72, ran the Guardian Bank in the Caymans until his arrest for money laundering in July 1996. After revealing the methods used in the scams he received a non-custodial sentence in the American courts.Offshore Alert editor David Marchant said: “This court decision re-emphasises the need for offshore territories to attract clean international business, as opposed to simply providing facilities for the criminally-minded to launder money.”More offshore centres should take their lead from Bermuda, which is not only the most successful offshore centre but also the cleanest.”The IRS’s success in obtaining the order is likely to spur it to apply for other similar orders for other offshore jurisdictions.The British Inland Revenue will be watching with interest. Antigua and the Bahamas are former British colonies and the Cayman Islands remain a British dependency.The IRS intends to cross-reference the information obtained from the two card companies with the tax returns filed by cardholders to find tax fraud. Some 400 agents have been assigned to the investigation.IRS court documents claimed that at least $70bn of US tax money was lost each year to offshore tax havens.The IRS petition for the ex parte order in the US District Court in South Florida states that American Express and Mastercard holders have failed to declare their offshore accounts.