In the report, the Bank highlighted the rise in secured debt (essentially mortgages) relative to households’ incomes, which has increased by around a quarter over the past five years and has almost tripled since 1980. The future of corporate Britain is at risk because of over-stretched company balance sheets, the Bank of England will warn today. The businesses bought from GUS had sales of £1.7bn last year.Although there would be competition from conventional high street retailers, this would not be sufficient to prevent Littlewoods exploiting its position and raising prices.But Littlewoods hopes to convince the Competition Commission that mail order should no longer be regarded as a separate market but part of the general non-food market where its share would be an “insignificant” 3 per cent.The company also argues that the concept of “agency” home shopping, where local agents collect from neighbours along their street every week, no longer exists in any serious way. The deal, completed in May, was not conditional on regulatory clearance.David Simons, chairman of Littlewoods, acknowledged there had always been a risk of a referral after the competition authorities blocked a similar deal in 1997 involving the merger of Littlewoods and Freemans mail order. But he said Littlewoods was confident of persuading the Competition Commission of its case.”The game has changed since 1997.

Mail order has been in steep decline and it is no longer the only source of credit for people who can’t get it elsewhere. Its finance director, Michael Barry, said: “We invoiced them because we believed the money was due and payable, and we would have expected it to have been paid within a reasonable period.”It also emerged yesterday that another product, the Flight glucose monitoring system, is not yet on the market in the US.Medisys has told analysts it has only recently begun shipping the product to Wal-Mart, the superstore giant that has agreed to sell Flight.Seb Jantet at Investec Securities said: “Whilst it was very well received by the industry at August’s launch, the retail launch has fallen about a month behind schedule.”. Keith Butler-Wheelhouse, the chief executive of Smiths, said the company had “almost given up on it”.The device, whose needle is pulled back inside the syringe with a rubber band to stop hospital staff pricking themselves, is proving difficult for hospital staff to operate. Medisys admitted that despite having met quality standards in the laboratory in July, Futura did not meet similar standards when hospital feedback was reviewed later that month and again last week.The companies are now in dispute over a $1.95m (£1.2m) milestone payment, which the City had factored into forecasts for Medisys’s current financial year, but which Smiths believes is not due until clinical testing is complete.Medisys argues that the completion of the lab tests should trigger the payment. Medisys, the Aberdeen-based medical devices group, said yesterday that its US marketing partner was withholding a milestone payment as a result of ongoing problems with its flagship product, the Futura safety syringe.
Medisys admitted that feedback from hospitals using the syringe had revealed further problems with the product and that it was extending the trial period to gather more data.The company has agreed with Smiths Group, its US distributor, that they will review the future of the product late next month. Market share figures released earlier this week by Taylor Nelson Sofres showed that Safeway had held its own during the past 12 weeks, ceding just 0.5 percentage points of its share of the market.. Either way, Safeway will have to endure months more of uncertainty about its future.

The BBC will still not see me as an equivalent of, say Peter Hitchens, or Jonathan Freedland. Although Morrison has the smallest overlap with Safeway because of its northern bias, it is likely to have to sell at up to 50 stores, while Asda could be ordered to sell at least 100 stores.Bob Stott, Morrison’s managing director, last week ruled out any idea that the group might team up with Asda, saying: “We have no intention of making anybody else’s bid successful.”Once bidders are cleared, they usually have 21 days under takeover rules to make an offer, but if conditions are attached the timetable may be relaxed. The Government will unveil its blueprint for the future of Britain’s supermarket sector today, when it gives its ruling on the four competing bids for Safeway, the country’s fourth biggest grocer. Marcus Beresford retired earlier this year as chief executive of GKN, handing over to Kevin Smith.Brambles was the subject of takeover speculation last week with dealers in Sydney suggesting that General Electric of the US and the Australian conglomerate Wesfarmers had the company in their sights.The group said it was not involved in any discussions, nor had it received any bid approaches Brambles shares closed 5.25p lower in London at 174p.. Other setbacks included delayed contracts and service centre fires.Mr Turner, 58, said significant progress had already been made and the turnaround of the Chep pallets business was on track.

He will retain his performance share rights but these are worthless at present because the group is not expected to hit the targets which would trigger payment of the shares.The Sydney-based but dual-listed Brambles was created out of the demerger two years ago of GKN’s pallet and waste divisions from its automotive and aerospace activities.Brambles has suffered since from the global economic downturn and the legacy of overspending and lax cash controls when it was still part of GKN, and a wide-ranging overhaul of the group is now being carried out. Mr Gallagher said he was calling in lawyers to examine if he has a case for trademark infringement against Abbey National. “We are a long-established listed company competing for investment funds and for the support and involvement of investors. We are entitled to the benefit of our name”.Wolff Olins, the brand consultancy, was paid £500,000 for work on Abbey National’s new identity, which is being accompanied by a blitz on banking jargon.. “We have registered the Abbey name as our trademark in financial services. The two companies are in very different fields, and we are still listed at Companies House and on the Stock Exchange as Abbey National”.Abbey plc, which is listed on the London and Dublin stock exchanges, builds residential houses and develops commercial property in South-east England and Ireland. Normally we would want to live and let live, but we feel this is a step too far”.Abbey National is closing the umbrella on the couple who have been its logo since the Forties, in favour of a new fuzzy, multi-coloured rendering of its shortened name.