Where behaviour falls below our high standards we will take the necessary action to make sure customers are

Where behaviour falls below our high standards we will take the necessary action to make sure customers are protected and markets properly informed.”Mr Headdon said yesterday that “a minor peripheral issue was being blown out of all proportion in order to create a scapegoat from amongst the former Equitable management”.”There has been a consistent theme of the FSA attempting to deflect criticism away from itself,” he said. “That began with Sir Howard Davies’s [the former chairman of the FSA] criticisms of the former management to the Treasury [select] committee in late 2001. The FSA’s November 2001 press release announcing the investigation into the matter appeared to prejudge the result before the investigation had ever begun.”Mr Headdon added that he had decided to withdraw his appeal against the ban as it would have been both costly and time consuming, especially in light of forthcoming litigation against himself and other former quitable board members by the society’s current management.He said he had quit his most recent job, at Hazell Carr, the actuarial consultants, earlier this year to focus full time on the litigation, which he said now amounted almost to a “full-time job”. The FSA said that such a cancellation could have left Equitable in breach of its regulations, hence the letter should have been disclosed.Andrew Proctor, the FSA’s enforcement director, said: “Mr Headdon should have provided information to the FSA about the side letter to the reinsurance contract and as a result of his failure to do so the FSA has concluded he is not fit and proper.”The FSA sets high standards by which we judge senior management. Chris Headdon, the former chief executive of Equitable Life, hit back at the Financial Services Authority yesterday after being issued a six-year industry ban, saying the move was yet another attempt by the regulator to deflect criticism away from itself. Mr Jongejan said the two major open access providers, BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science in the US, were able to keep charges below this level by only “subsidies” He said that was distorting the debate..

“This is a step in the right direction but only true open access is the solution,” Ms Robshaw said.Reed hit out at its open access rivals and insisted the debate was now moving in its favour. Open access requires the academics or their employer to pay for publication, which is then made available for free to all researchers. He said the latest concession was “what our critics and authors want”.The change means that scientists would now be able to make available for free the version of their research paper that has been through Reed’s peer review and editing process. The papers can appear on a website before publication in the Reed journals but they can only ever be put on the academic’s personal website or the website of their employer.But Reed’s rivals said the company had not gone far enough. The report is expected next month.Reed’s Mr Jongejan said the open access business model was not viable. He saidReed could, if it chose, move to open access but it would need to charge $3,000 for each paper it published.

Publication is free in Reed’s journals – revenues are earned, instead, from library subscriptions and charges for downloading the articles.Last year, Reed Elsevier’s science and medical publishing division made revenues of £1.4bn, with profits of £467m on an operating margin of 34 per cent.A parliamentary committee is investigating whether Reed and other science publishers are over-charging academics. Reed contends that receiving payment for publication compromises the integrity of the editorial process and shuts out researchers who cannot afford the publication fees. Natasha Robshaw, at BioMed Central, said academics would not be allowed to point other researchers to their papers from central scientific databases. Academic libraries have complained that subscriptions to leading science journals, such as those published by Reed Elsevier, are cripplingly expensive. The company has responded that it acts as a guarantee of quality.Arie Jongejan, the chief executive of the science & technology division of Elsevier, insisted the company’s policy on publication was already much more “liberal” than opponents suggested. It is thought that the winning bid would be more than £600m.Lorna Tilbian, an analyst at Numis, said: “We believe the first equity issuance since 1931 [at DMGT] is the most likely route for financing a winning bid for the Telegraph.”The Rothermere family holds 88 per cent of the voting shares and 26 per cent of the non-voting shares. In the past, the Rothermeres have not been prepared to see their holding diluted but industry sources pointed out that buying the Telegraph was a once in a lifetime opportunity.