Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein has previously valued it at up to $21.1bn.Douglas McNabb, a federal criminal defence lawyer in Houston, said the hearing could derail the sale of Yukos assets if it discouraged the banks supporting Gazprom from going ahead. “It needs their approval and for us to talk in a way that suggested that was not a relevant factor would be foolish,” he added.. Yukos emitted what appeared to be its final death rattle yesterday, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States just four days before its main production unit is due to be forcibly sold off to help pay an enormous back tax bill. Its principal asset, Yuganskneftegaz, is expected to be snapped up for a fraction of its real value by the state-owned Gazprom, which has organised a huge loan through a network of Western banks.The starting price of $8.6bn (£4.4bn) is considered risible by market standards. Mr Ramsay rejected suggestions that MG Rover may have jeopardised the joint venture by talking prematurely about it, pointing out that two agreements had been signed with the Chinese in the past week covering the development of a new medium car, due out in 2006, and another new model.But he agreed that the company had to be careful not to upset the Chinese government.

Yukos has US investors and business dealings in Texas, and its chief financial officer Bruce Misamore is based there.The US bankruptcy judge Letitia Clark said she would decide on the request for a temporary restraining order to stay the auction after hearing arguments in Houston today.Russia’s Federal Property Fund, the organiser of Sunday’s contentious fire-sale, said it would only change its plans if it had an order from Russian as opposed to foreign bailiffs.Barring a minor miracle, Sunday looks likely to mark the end of Yukos as a corporate behemoth. The Rover 25 will start at a little less than £9,000, with leather and wood trim as standard and extra equipment such as alloy wheels and CD tuner.Mr Ramsay said the completion of the SAIC venture would help boost sales and restore confidence among MG Rover’s dealer network, which it plans to expand next year with the addition of 40 UK showrooms.The SAIC deal is due to be consummated at a formal signing ceremony at Longbridge in January. Sales of the model have reached only 6,000 this year compared with an original target of 30,000. But it is expected that the price of the City Rover, the new small car imported from Tata of India, will be cut from £6,450 to less than £6,000. Total sales for 2004 will come at less than 120,000 – a drop of nearly 20 per cent on the previous year.Rod Ramsay, MG Rover’s managing director for sales, attributed most of this year’s decline to loss of confidence in the brand because of doubts about the company’s long-term future and adverse publicity over alleged boardroom greed at Phoenix Venture Holdings, its parent company.Mr Ramsay said: “It is not a result I want to see repeated in 2005, we are determined to increase sales.” He declined to give a sales forecast for next year or detail the size of the reductions.

In an effort to rebalance stocks, Longbridge will shut for four days next week in the run-up to Christmas.MG Rover’s UK market share has collapsed this year to just 3 per cent, resulting in its lowest-ever car sales. Other senior management positions will be split roughly equally between the two merger partners.Sprint and Nextel are being valued equally in the cash and shares deal and their shareholders will each own about 50 per cent of the new company after the merger.Under the terms of the proposed deal, existing Sprint shares will remain outstanding and each Nextel common share will be converted into new company shares and a small per share amount of cash, with a total value equal to 1.3 shares of Sprint Nextel common stock.. MG Rover is to cut prices and improve the specification of its models in an effort to kick-start sales after the worst year in the company’s history.
The move will take place in February after the Longbridge-based car maker has formed a new joint venture company with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC), which will see the Chinese car maker invest up to £1bn in MG Rover in return for a controlling 70 per cent stake.The new marketing strategy will mean a bargain basement clear-out of existing stocks over the next six weeks as dealers prepare for the upgraded models. The UK company has since said it is “not in discussions” with Verizon about a possible deal. Verizon would be boosted by a successful offerbecause it would be able to increase the amount it could plough into capital spending and marketing in the fast-evolving sector. Some analysts also believe a tie-up would be advantageous because the two share the same technology, unlike Sprint and Nextel.Others think a bid would be risky.

Verizon, which has 42 million customers, could run into competition issues if it attempted to buy Sprint, because together the two companies would control 35 per cent of the market.Vodafone, which alarmed shareholders this year when it unsuccessfully approached AT&T Wireless, saw £2bn wiped off its value on Tuesday on reports it had given the go-ahead to Verizon to make a bid. The US telecommunications giants Sprint and Nextel Communications agreed a $35bn (£18bn) “merger of equals” yesterday to create the country’s third-largest mobile phone network, with 35 million customers.
The move will put pressure on Verizon Wireless, America’s No 2 mobile player, which is 45 per cent owned by Vodafone. The remaining stake in Verizon Wireless is owned by Verizon Communications, the largest fixed-line telephone company in the United States.Verizon must decide whether to try to break up the deal with a rival bid for Sprint, or face increased competition from the new company, which will have annual revenues of about $36bn.The company has spent months considering whether to bid for Sprint. In parallel with negotiations on the carrier contract, the Ministry of Defence is also discussing a new approach to naval procurement. This could result in BAE’s Clydeside yards being merged with VT’s Portsmouth yard and Rosyth into one joint company in return for guaranteed workload over the next 10 to 15 years.. KBR is thought to have given the Ministry of Defence a guarantee that it will do the job for a fixed fee before its role has been properly defined.The Nigg facility on the Cromarty Firth has not been used for years, has no workforce and no experience of building naval vessels.

KBR is thought to have been keen to have final assembly carried out there so it could avoid the costs of closing down and decommissioning the site.But this would have entailed creating considerable additional warship-building capacity in the UK when its existing yards are having difficulty filling their order books. Since his wife left him, all he does is drink and get into trouble. Last night he came home and he said the police were following him. But why would the police be following him if he wasn’t doing something wrong?” Before leaving, she pats me on the shoulder and whispers in my ear: “God bless you for bringing this here.”Another woman tells me she once saw the image of the Virgin Mary on a plate in her house “It broke the next day,” she said “It shattered all by itself.