No woman ever sat on the HIH board and no women reached the rank of senior executive

No woman ever sat on the HIH board, and no women reached the rank of senior executive. Female employees were banned from wearing trousers.Mr Williams, who will finish giving evidence today, was asked by Mr Martin about a A$700 tip that he gave a Queensland restaurant in May 2000. Did he consider the interests of shareholders and policyholders when he was deciding how much to leave? “Yes, certainly,” Mr Williams replied In the public seats, someone snorted with disbelief.. Fund managers and institutional investors burnt by diving stock markets switched millions of pounds out of equities across the globe in July in favour of less volatile investments such as cash, the fund tracking service Lipper said. Fund managers cut back their UK equity holdings by 0.8 per cent in July to make up 29.3 per cent of their portfolios. Holdings in North American equities also fell from those in June, down 0.6 per cent to 32 per cent Japanese and European equities were also shunned. Money has instead been ploughed into cash, where holdings rose from 2.6 per cent to 2.7 per cent of the average portfolio.Life and pension fund managers in the balanced fund sector – which can invest a maximum of 85 per cent in equities – have been making similar moves into safe haven assets.

The 132 life funds that manage assets of £3.2bn reduced UK equity exposure to 56 per cent from 57 per cent and increased their cash holdings to 4 per cent in July. UK fixed interest exposure increased to 12.7 per cent.Pension funds, where the average fund size is £471m, reduced their UK equity holdings by 1 per cent to 55 per cent and North American equities by 0.3 per cent to 6.4 per cent. The amount held in cash went up to become 5.6 per cent of portfolios.Ben Yearsley, an investment manager at independent the financial adviser Hargreaves Lansdown, says despite the downturn in equity markets many private investors are sticking with their investments “We are finding most private investors are not selling. They may not want to investment more, but they don’t want to sell at the worst time. Life and pension funds have been forced in to it, but private investors are sitting on their hands,” he said.. The Financial Services Authority yesterday chastised 4,000 small and medium-sized businesses for having no back-up plans if an attack similar to 11 September were to occur.

A spokesman for the FSA said: “This is plainly a moment to tell everybody about the risks, but something could happen at any time.”The FSA is confident its own centre, which has a separate IT system and satellite links, would enable it to maintain contact with companies and the London Stock Exchange.As well as its own central role, the FSA has identified 35 of the biggest financial institutions, such as the UK’s high street banks, as crucial to the running of the economy.Mr Foot said that the emergency arrangements of large companies were “pretty good”. He added that the FSA’s own centre “could be up and running in half an hour”. If a terrorist event did occur, the FSA said it would send 25 staff to its centre – whose location is secret – and could back that up with a further 300 if necessary.Mr Foot said: “The FSA, along with the Treasury and Bank of England, has worked closely with the financial services industry to raise standards. Consequently, the ability of key firms and the authorities to respond to a disaster or operational failure has improved markedly over the past year.”.