SIR Graham Hearne chairman of the oil exploration group Enterprise Oil doubled his pay to pounds

SIR Graham Hearne, chairman of the oil exploration group Enterprise Oil, doubled his pay to pounds 800,000 last year after the first payout was made under its long term performance scheme, writes Michael Harrison. Shares worth a total of pounds 1.05m were granted to the five executive board directors, equivalent to 84 per cent of their potential entitlement, based on Enterprise’s performance in the last three years. Costs associated with relocating these casinos and developing overseas businesses have also depressed earnings.London Clubs said it remained cautious about prospects as long as the economic uncertainty in Asia and the strong pound remained.Profits for the year to March are now expected to fall to around pounds 27m – well below analysts’ forecasts and the pounds 35.5m it made in the previous 12 months.London Clubs, with other big casino operators, is continuing to lobby the Government about the imposition of higher gaming duty, which threatens to wipe pounds 12m off its annual profits. The group yesterday accused the Government of failing to understand the casino business..

Gamblers’ luck has also turned, with London Clubs paying out a higher percentage of its takings in winnings this year compared to last. The upmarket casino operator, which is already reeling from the Government’s decision to impose a large hike in gaming duty in the Budget, warned yesterday that profits in the second half of the year would be flat, sending the group’s shares down another 5p to 176p.
Attendances at the Ritz and the Rendezvous casinos have been disappointing in the recent months. THE STRONG pound and the economic turmoil in the Far East have caused the number of high rolling gamblers visiting Britain to fall, piling on the misery for London Clubs International. However it is expected that he will soon take early retirement. He has been with MFI since 1972 and is likely to be eligible for compensation.

He was paid a salary of pounds 190,000 last year and is on a 12-month contract.MFI shares have been under pressure since a profits warning in February Yesterday they closed 0.5p higher at 86p.. His responsibilities as retail director will pass to Matthew Ingle, currently head of MFI’s Howden Joinery division. Mr Ingle is also being promoted to the main board where he will be responsible for MFI retail and Howden. Last month MFI said Mr Ingle’s promotion to head of MFI retail would not be a main board appointment.
Mr O’Connell, 51, will remain on the board for the time being as deputy chairman. Ventura said it hoped to fill most of the 1,750 vacancies with local people.
The company, which has recorded a 42 per cent growth per year for the last seven years, manages millions of customer accounts on behalf of clients such as Cellnet, BT, Co-Operative Bank and Kingfisher. John O’Connell, head of MFI’s furniture retailing operations, is expected to leave the company following a boardroom shake-up announced yesterday. The new jobs created in the Dearne Valley will be a massive boost to the local economy.”.

Steve Fairbank, Ventura chief executive, said: “The new site is a major commitment to the expansion of Ventura’s successful business. The Dearne Valley area of South Yorkshire, where the new site is to be built, suffered dramatically from pit closures in the 1980s and 1990s, and has an unemployment rate of 9.9 per cent per cent – nearly double the national average. The site is due to be finished by November and temporary premises at nearby Silkstone House are being used while building work is carried out. “After considerable thought to what I honestly believe is just and fair, notwithstanding the dreadful enormity of his death, this is not a case to be met with further imprisonment,” the judge said.Owen, of Morda, near Oswestry, Shropshire, had denied murdering Mr Parkes but admitted manslaughter.Phillip Shears QC, prosecuting, said the couple had often had violent arguments, and police were called to their home a number of times.During the argument, Mr Parkes walked on to the knife Owen had picked up after he slapped her about the face.

It warned yesterday that a sharp rise in sterling, which appreciated by one-fifth last year against currencies such as the German mark, had knocked pounds 32.7m off its pre-tax profits. THE Royal Yacht Britannia is to be moored permanently at Leith, Edinburgh, the Government announced yesterday. George Robertson, Secretary of State for Defence, confirmed Leith’s success at a media conference in London and in doing so dashed Manchester’s hopes of providing the vessel’s final resting place.. A ROW over education spending broke yesterday after The Independent reported government figures showing cuts in overall expenditure this year. In a letter to The Independent, David Blunkett, Secretary of State for Education and Employment, said the report was wrong, and John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, told the Commons that the figures were “not consistent with the truth”.
“The total increase for education in 1998-99 over 1997-98 is pounds 1.5bn,” Mr Blunkett says. “The figures which [The Independent] quotes fail to include the pounds 2bn student debt sale.”But Don Foster, the Liberal Democrats’ education spokesman, said: “The whole thing is smoke and mirrors, and it’s about time the whole thing was exposed.”He said Mr Blunkett’s own departmental report, published this week, revealed that the amount of money to be received this year from student loan debt sales would amount to pounds 1bn, and the report adds that “the Department surrenders receipts to the [Treasury] Consolidated Fund”.In Commons exchanges, Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat MP for Southwark North and Bermondsey, said: “Now that today’s Treasury figures show that the Government will in the past year and in the coming year spend less of our national wealth on education than the Tories, isn’t it clear that at local level, Labour does not deliver value for money, and at national level, they just don’t deliver the money?”Mr Prescott – standing in for Tony Blair – replied that in its first two years’ spending plans, the Government had given more than pounds 2bn to education; much more than the Liberal Democrats promised at the last election, and “certainly more than was envisaged in the expenditure programme of the previous administration”.Letters, page 22. The new positions are mainly for customer service advisers to handle the 60 million customer telephone calls and 30 million items of correspondence which Ventura manages each year.