The Borse’s attempt – the NeurMarkt – was successful during the dot-com boom, bringing all sorts of uncooked companies to investor attention before a massive collapse brought billions of euros in losses. Ofgem will release plans for a national strategy on new grid connections for renewables later this year, and has set aside pounds 1bn to improve the grid generally.Mike O’Brien, the energy minister, said another pounds 1bn a year would come on stream by 2010. The group also warned that, as a result of the accountancy problems, pre-tax losses for 2004 would come in at pounds 7.5m.It was not just Richard Grasso who benefited from the New York Stock Exchange’s largesse. A report into the pay and benefits dolled out to the NYSE’s former boss revealed his personal assistant was paid $240,000 (pounds 128,055) a year while his two drivers picked up $130,000 each Mr Grasso received more than $190m over eight years.. Tony Blair’s plans to generate a 10th of Britain’s electricity from “green” sources have been blown off course by significant delays in building offshore wind farms.

The Prime Minister’s strategy to tackle climate change by switching to renewable energy is based heavily on plans to build vast wind farms of up to 300 turbines off the British coast by the end of the decade.
The Government had gambled that offshore schemes would generate up to four gigawatts of electricity, meeting about 40 per cent of the total renewables target for 2010. Former Marks & Spencer boss Luc Vandevelde secured the chairmanship of French supermarket giant Carrefour last week after a battle for management control. It was also announced that Carrefour’s chief executive, Daniel Bernard, would leave, to be replaced by finance director Jose Luis Duran. Mr Vandevelde represents the chain’s largest shareholder, the Halley family, which had become impatient with Mr Bernard’s failure to stem a loss of market share in France. Nortel is seeking a total of nearly C$13m from Mr Dunn and two other executives who were sacked over an accounting scandal. However, most believe the Bank of England’s interest-rate- setting committee will leave the cost of borrowing at 4.75 per cent, for the time being at least.CALENDARTomorrow 7UK: Results: (final) Pursuit Dynamics, Rangold Resources; (interim) Albermarle & Bond Holdings, Cambridge Antibody Technology, Invox.Tuesday 8UK: Results: (F) Alphameric, BP, Brandon Hire, Dobbies Garden Centres, Milestone; (I) Dicom, PZ Cussons.Wednesday 9UK: Results: (F) ARC International, Liberty International, Reckitt Benckiser; (I) Regent Inns.Thursday 10UK: Results:(F) Barclays, GlaxoSmithKline, ICI, Rolls-Royce, Unilever; (I) Macro 4, McBride; (first quarter) lastminute ; (third quarter) BT, Scottish Power.Friday 11UK: Results: none scheduled..

Nortel claims the executives signed off financial statements that inflated company profits and triggered the bonus payments.
Mowlem revealed that its finance director, Gerald Brown, who has been with the construction group since 1973, was leaving after the discovery of “a number of historic accounting issues”. Network giant Nortel started legal action against Frank Dunn, its former chief executive, to retrieve a near C$8m (pounds 3.4m) bonus. It left rates on hold, citing concerns about unemployment – a worry proved well founded when Deutsche Bank revealed it was axing a total of 6,400 jobs.. Investors will want an update on how this is going, as well as any news on costs.Reckitt Benckiser – owner of Dettol, Harpic, Air Wick and French’s Mustard, among many other brands – is set to build on its reputation for providing consistent, reliable growth. Full-year pre-tax profits are forecast to rise from pounds 660m to pounds 750m and net revenues by around 9 per cent, although currency fluctuations will be an issue.A number of big-name companies overseas are also reporting.