Barclays caved in to pressure from the City yesterday by writing to its entire shareholder base to explain why it is allowing

Barclays caved in to pressure from the City yesterday by writing to its entire shareholder base to explain why it is allowing Matt Barrett to step up from the role of chief executive to chairman. He said Mr Sands would stay on for at least three months to help oversee what he anticipates being “an easy integration” process.Punch, which announced the deal alongside strong full-year results, expects to make about £10m a year in savings from the deal by cutting head office, marketing and purchasing costs. Mr Thorley said it was too early to speculate on the scale of job losses. Analysts at Merrill Lynch forecast that the deal would boost Punch’s earnings by about 25 per cent in 2004.Punch, which leases its pubs to tenants and takes a share of their profits, said its pre-tax profit for the year to August rose 22 per cent to £113m..

The other major shareholders, who have all promised to back the deal, are the Tchenguiz brothers with 34 per cent, WestLB, the beleaguered German investment bank, with 22 per cent, and Lehman Brothers with 21 per cent.Mr Thorley said Punch had been eyeing Pubmaster for years and had decided to make a move in the summer. Of this, 22 per cent is owned by the group’s management team. He signalled his appetite for further deals, noting the pub market remained “very fragmented”.The purchase price includes £1bn of debt, valuing Pubmaster’s equity at £163m. Punch shares jumped 14 per cent to 398p, their highest level since the group, which was founded by the leisure entrepreneur Hugh Osmond, was floated last year.Giles Thorley, Punch’s chief executive, said the group would sell 206 pubs to avoid creating local monopolies. Punch Tavern’s £1.2bn acquisition of Pubmaster yesterday sealed a £36m windfall for the privately owned pub group’s management team and staff.
John Sands, Pubmaster’s chief executive, will receive about £6m for his 3.5 per cent stake, while more than half of the company’s 220 staff will pocket payouts, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.The deal, which comes just weeks after Spirit’s £2.5bn purchase of Scottish & Newcastle’s pub arm, transforms Punch into the UK’s biggest landlord with about 7,400 pubs. But he added that it was “commonplace” for smaller companies with “limited analyst coverage and limited liquidity” to use the house broker “to guide the market”.The chief executive, Angus Monro, said it was “quite normal behaviour for a small cap company” to release information in this way, adding that the FSA had not been in contact with the company.Yesterday’s announcement comes four weeks after the company produced upbeat interim results.The group’s shares, which were as low as 51.5p in February, closed at 114.5p yesterday, down 3.5p.. Brown & Jackson, the Poundstretcher retailer, yesterday issued a profits warning the day after its house broker downgraded its revenues and profits forecasts.

But the official company statement only came 24 hours later.The City regulator, the Financial Services Authority, stipulates that, as part of a listing obligations, “a company must notify a Regulatory Information Service without delay” of a change “in the performance of its business which, if made public, would be likely to lead to substantial movement in the price of its listed securities”.A spokesman for Brown & Jackson said the news had been distributed “slightly clumsily through the broker”. The minimum fee the LSE charges smaller companies has doubled to £5,000. But analysts said average fees only rose by 30 per cent because it also changed their structure, so that they went up in a smooth line rather than in steps.The LSE said its fees remained cheap compared to the New York Stock Exchange, where companies pay a minimum of £25,000 and a maximum of £357,143. The Continental Euronext charges a minimum of £2,500 though there is no maximum ceiling.The LSE reported a pre-tax profit for the six months of £44.7m, 6 per cent down on the year but slightly above analyst forecasts of £43.9m.. They saw large companies having to pay an annual charge of £42,125, compared to £24,625 previously. However, the LSE could come to an agreement with the OFT by lowering its prices or guaranteeing that they will not be raised again.Clara Furse, the chief executive of the LSE, said the fee increases were “the first significant rise since 1995″.

It also reported flat turnover and a 6 per cent drop in pre-tax profit for the six months to 30 September.”The Exchange is currently negotiating a resolution of this matter and expects an outcome shortly,” the LSE said.The exchange makes money from charging companies a one-off fee for floating in London and an annual fee for having their shares listed here. Because the LSE is the only platform companies can use to list on London’s main market, there is potential for it to exploit its monopoly by charging abnormally high prices.The OFT confirmed it had received complaints from some of the LSE’s customers, which triggered its investigation.If the OFT finds evidence the exchange has acted in an anti-competitive way, it will refer the case to the Competition Commission. The London Stock Exchange is being investigated by the Office of Fair Trading over possible anti-competitive behaviour after it imposed a 70 per cent price increase on some companies for listing in London last year. It is advising members to vote against Mr Murdoch Jnr and three other directors up for election.. Mr Murdoch Jr was installed as Sky’s chief executive on Monday and he faces election as a company director at the group’s annual general meeting on 14 November.The meeting between the ABI and Sky non-executive directors, led by Allan Leighton, followed inflammatory comments from Mr Murdoch Snr late on Tuesday night, when he lambasted “so-called investors” who had “never put a penny” into the satellite television company.On Tuesday, the National Association of Pension Funds, the other key mainstream investor organisation, tried to defuse the conflict advising its members to vote in favour of James Murdoch at the AGM.Pirc, an independent adviser to pension funds, said there was “no justification” for any concerned shareholders to change position. Its statement said: “We support them [the non-executives] in their efforts to ensure that BSkyB is in a position to generate value for all shareholders.”But Peter Montagnon, director of investment affairs at the ABI, told The Independent yesterday: “We still have serious concern about the family relationship which has be to addressed, one way or another …