EDINBURGH: A ban on smoking has come into effect in Scotland Sunday, making it the first part of Britain where pubs, restaurants and workplaces are to remain no-smoking zones.

Health experts hope the ban will have a clear impact on the people’s health and result in a big drop in the number of deaths due to passive smoking, which is estimated around 1,000 a year in the region with a population of five million. They expect that Scotland, which is considered the “sick man of Europe” because of a life style marked by heaving drinking and smoking, unhealthy diets and sedentary way of life, will see a major change in the life style because of the ban.

A major promotion of the ban is being undertaken at various levels. On the first day of the ban, at the Edinburgh airport, volunteers were seen handing out leaflets explaining the ban. There are banners put up in the city declaring, “Welcome to a smoke free Scotland.”

First minister Jack McConnell, head of Scotland government said, “We have an unhealthy reputation and we are going to change that. We have a record as a country that has too much heart disease, too much cancer, too many stroke victims.”

He said in the years ahead, people will look back on today as the day that Scotland took the largest single step to improve its health for generations.

The new law makes smoking inside an enclosed public place an offence, attracting an on-the-spot fine of 50 pounds.

Ireland is the first country, which had imposed a nation-wide ban on smoking in 2004. Several other countries have since followed suit banning smoking in public places. England, Wales and Northern Ireland are expected to impose ban on smoking early next year.

Scotland has carried out several surveys, which have shown that more than 60 per cent of its people support the ban.

About 30 per cent of the Scottish people are known to smoke, a higher rate than the rest of Britain. They also enjoy a lower life expectancy.

There are people who oppose the ban. They describe it as an attack on individual freedom and intrusion into the life of working class people. Pub and restaurant owners are also concerned about the ban as they expect it would affect their businesses.

Pro-smoking group Forest said the smokers were being victimised and told them to stand up to the “bullying tactics of health fanatics”.

As the ban was a few hours away, pubs, clubs and restaurants across the country had thousands of smokers assembled, puffing on their final cigarettes, with some venues holding special events to mark the occasion.

As the ban came into force, anti-smoking enforcement officers, mostly from environmental health departments, were seen in pubs across the country to ensure that no one was breaking the new law.

There are fears that as the ban becomes effective, smokers could make regular trips to England across the border to have a puff. The Scottish Licensed Trade Association said there will be “smoke commuters” travelling to England to have a cigarette. The association said the ban could be devastating for pubs in the Borders.

LONDON: A study by online money transfer site PayPal shows that music downloads will go up ten fold in Britain by 2010. The Digital Content Report by PayPal says this increase will account for nearly 15 per cent of all music sold in the country.

According to estimates projected in the report, an average music enthusiast would download 25 songs at a cost of 15 pounds, which will be totally worth over 379 million pounds by 2010. Even downloads on to cellphones will go up and will be worth around 200 million pounds.

In addition to music downloads, other services like movie clips and mobile TV can push the market for mobile phone downloads 380 million pounds in 2005 to 1.14 billion pounds by 2010, the report has predicted.

Availability of an increasing range of music and the average price in the range of 60 pence a download could boost legal downloads, the report said.

PayPal also said download of movies on to computers is another segment that is poised for growth. From a nil figure today, this sector could have a value as high as 109 million pounds by 2010.

PayPal Europe’s general manager, U.K. merchant services Carl-Olav Scheible said consumers are going to shift more of their music purchasing to online services as devices change, digital storage becomes more prevalent and use of discs becomes less widespread.

The report also predicts that ebooks and online gaming will be other areas where substantial growth will be seen. Buying games could reach 9 million pounds by 2010 and ebooks around 8.9 million pounds.

The research for the report was conducted in the early parts of March by corporate data firm Datamonitor.

FRANKFURT: German pharmaceutical major Bayer AG is all set to annex rival Schering AG for 16.3 billion euros as another German firm, Merck KGaA, called off its plans to get to the top position in the German drug industry through the Schering acquisition.

Bayer came in as a white knight in the acquisition saga beating Merck’s 77-euro-a-share offer with its 86-euro-a-share offer. Merck said it is walking away because a higher price than it offered is not justified.

If Bayer wins Schering, it will create a unified entity with 15 million euros in sales. Bayer is yet to recover from the setback of its cholesterol drug Baycol, which had to be recalled in 2001. The acquisition will bring to its fold Schering’s top-selling oral birth control drug Yasmin and multiple sclerosis drug Betaseron.

The combined drugs business will be called Bayer-Schering Pharmaceuticals and will be based on Berlin.

Schering’s chief executive Hubertus Erlen said it is not possible for the company to maintain its independence given the attractive nature of the Bayer bid. He said he would recommend the offer to the shareholders.

Bayer’s chief executive Werner Wenning said Schering has a good network in the United States, which will help the merged company to market Bayer’s new cancer drug, Nexavar.

Bayer estimates that the merger could lead to some 6,000 job cuts as there are overlaps at production, research and development and sales levels.

The company will finance the deal through 3 million euros it has in cash resources and through new credit lines from Credit Suisse and Citigroup. The arrangement will be through a mix of equity, term debt, hybrid instruments and the proceeds from the sale of non-core assets of the company.

German insurance company Allianz is Schering’s single largest shareholder although its holdings are not strategic. It is not clear how it will act if the deal goes through.

Merck said its board felt that a higher price for Schering shares is not justified. The company’s chief executive Michael Roemer said he is still convinced that Merck-Schering combination would have been a good option for both companies.

The 338-year-old company will now need to find out other ways to consolidate and grow. It said it will continue to explore other options.

Schering shares were still up 1.5 per cent at 86.26 euros. The markets had earlier hoped that Merck would come back with a higher offer.

LONDON: Annual profits of Kesa Electricals Plc., owners of consumer electronics chain Comet and French market leader Darty, slumped 19 per cent as its sales were affected both in Britain and France. The company said its net income for the year ended 31 January stood at 94.2 million pounds against 115.7 million pounds a year earlier.

Annual sales grew 3.6 per cent to 4.1 billion pounds, it said.

Kesa Electricals had on 14 March rejected a takeover bid from an unnamed private equity fund for 1.72 billion pounds in cash. The company had been facing price deflation, and its Comet chain had been struggling to ward off competition from supermarkets and online retailers.

The company, however, maintained that overall trading since the end of 2005 has improved, through it is too early to predict whether the trend will continue.

Chief executive Jean-Noel Labroue said the sales have been led by increasing demand for new technologies, particularly flat screen televisions, MP3 players and DVD recorders, while sales of high-margin goods like refrigerators remained weak. The sales mix had a negative impact on profit, he said, in spite of cost control measures and margin management by category.

Profit at Comet saw a 21.4 per cent slump, while at Darty it fell 7.3 per cent and at the BUT furniture and electricals chain in France 17.6 per cent. BUT faced intense competition from rivals like Ikea and PPR SA’s Conforama unit.

During the fiscal, the company reduced its debt by 44.4 million pounds to 166.3 million pounds.

Kesa is raising its dividend by 10 per cent to 12.1 pence a share.

The company’s shares closed at 325 pence Tuesday valuing the company at 1.72 billion pounds.

LONDON: Regulator the Office of Fair Trading has given approval for a code of practice governing the estate agency industry, designed to ensure that homebuyers and sellers get a fair deal and the consumers get protection beyond the basic provisions of the law.

The code, prepared by the Ombudsman for Estate Agents Company (OEA), is the first such code to be approved by the OFT. The estate agents can use the code as best practice when valuing property and when things go wrong provide access the aggrieved customer to free resolution of the dispute through the Ombudsman scheme.

The OEA has powers to award compensation to property buyers or sellers if it finds that they have been badly treated.

Agents who are members of the OEA (nearly 40 per cent of all estate agents are members and in April members of the National Association of Estate Agents are set to join it) will be required to sign up to the code.

John Fingleton, OFT chief executive described the establishment of the code as a great achievement for the OEA and a step that “reflects their commitment to a higher standard of customer service”.

He said consumers can be rest assured that when they select an estate agent who has the OEA/OFT Approved Code logo, they will get a fair treatment if they have a complaint.

The establishment of the code coincides with the revelation made by a team of BBC journalists on the illegal and unscrupulous practices by a number of estate agents. An unnamed property developer had told the BBC that estate agents were willing to sell him houses well below their true value in exchange for a substantial fee. And he said this practice is very much in prevalence in the industry. A BBC reporter then discovered that some of the estate agents even resorted to erecting “for sale” boards outside properties that were not on their books and lying to clients about false offers. The reporter also found that overvaluing a property and then making up the price of comparable properties in the area to influence surveyors was a common practice among them.

Another reporter came across instances of how a firm of financial advisers — recommended to would-be buyers by a particular estate agent — passes supposedly confidential personal financial information back to agency staff to help them evaluate the clients. Another estate agent provided the reporter, who posed as a world-be buyer of property with a false British passport for 750 pounds and false Customs and Revenue documentation, to facilitate obtaining a mortgage.

LONDON: UK inflation rates reached its targeted 2 per cent in February, official data showed Tuesday. According to the Office for National Statistics, consumer prices rose 0.3 per cent in February, thereby achieving the target set by the Bank of England for the first time since June 2005.

The annual rate of inflation was at 1.9 per cent both in December and January.

Economists felt there is a remote chance of the inflation going up in the coming months because of the phenomenal increase in energy charges.

However, going by the central bank’s own projections, the CPI annual rate is expected to be flat at 2 per cent through the next two years.

The bank forecasts could mean relatively robust GDP growth estimate — 2.7 per cent in 2006 and 3.1 per cent in 2007.

According to the ONS, the inflation went up for the first time in five months as retail stores stopped offering discounted prices on items such as books and furniture. Costs of recreation and culture, in which book prices are included, rose 0.8 per cent in the month, adding 0.2 percentage point to the annual index. Prices of furniture, furnishings and carpets gained 0.4 per cent, adding 0.02 percentage point. Computer games prices too were higher.

Despite the worries about the long-term impact of high energy prices, the increase in February rate was contained by a lower rate of increase in the price of petrol. The ONS said the average price for a litre of petrol rose by 0.4 pence in February compared to an increase of 0.6 pence per litre a year earlier.

Prices gained 0.3 per cent during February in housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels, adding 0.01 percentage point to the annual index. Natural gas prices were 60 per cent higher on an average compared with February 2005, while crude oil gained 19 per cent in the past year, the ONS said.

Goods prices went up 0.6 per cent, compared with a 0.3 per cent increase the month before.

Inflation was curbed by a decline in air fares, falling 1.9 per cent in the month as the winter holiday season ended. That knocked 0.1 percentage point off the overall index.

The ONS expects the inflation to go up further in March as there have been increases in energy prices.

Meanwhile, a survey by the central bank showed that households’ inflation expectations increased in the past quarter — the median expectation for the inflation rate over the next 12 months rose to 2.6 per cent, from 2.2 per cent in a November survey.

The Retail Price Index, which includes housing costs, and which is used to determine pensions, wage claims and index-linked contracts, was up 2.4 per cent in February, unchanged on the previous month.

The ONS also said it would be publishing two new indices intended to track the impact of changes in indirect taxes on inflation. The CPIY is intended to measure movements in “underlying” prices, excluding price changes considered to be directly the result of changes in indirect taxation.

The other new index is CPI at constant tax rates (CPI-CT), which is an analytical tool to determine the contribution of tax changes to the overall CPI inflation figures.

LONDON: Broking company Collins Stewart Tullett Plc., is demerging its Collins Stewart stockbroking business from the group and returning 300 million pounds to shareholders. The announcement came as the group announced its financial results — profits nearly trebling on higher revenues.

For the full year 2005, the firm’s pre-tax profit rose to 97.6 million pounds, compared with 34.2 million pounds in the previous year, on revenues of 798.1 million pounds, up from 583.9 million pounds.

Chief executive Terry Smith said in a statement that 2005 was another successful year in terms of progress with its strategic development and the financial performance with both the inter dealer broking and stockbroking businesses producing revenues and profits substantially ahead of the same period last year.

Smith said the demerger will make it easier for the firm to return cash to shareholders. Smith and the firm had won 300,000 pounds in legal damages from the Financial Times in 2005 over an article by the newspaper about alleged business practices by the firm.

Smith said the demerger is likely to be completed around the third quarter of the year. He will remain group chief executive of Tullett, which now owns a rival broking firm Prebon Yamane, and chairman of Collins Stewart. Shane Le Prevost, who became chief executive of Collins Stewart last year will continue to head that business.

Smith said Collins Stewart, which specialises in equities market making, will have a separate listing with a valuation of around 600 million pounds, while the Tullet interdealer broking business will be different and valued at around 1.3 billion pounds. The Tullett business functions as middleman between banks and other financial institutions that want to trade in bonds and derivatives.

The demerger is largely seen as a counter to the new rules on regulatory capital governing the amount financial institutions have to set aside to cover the risks they take.

Shares of Collins Stewart were down 8 pence at 713-1/2 pence, valuing the company at 1.51 billion pounds.

LONDON: A Manchester accountant has successfully sued his bank, Lloyds TSB, over what he claimed as unfair penalty charges, and won 2,000 pounds as he threatened to send bailiffs to recover the money.

The bank said it agreed to pay the accountant, Brian Mullen, the money he claimed was taken from his current account in the bank’s Manchester branch towards penalties on bounced cheques, direct debits and standing orders when Mullen exceeded his overdraft limit, mostly when he was a student.

Mullen claimed these penalties were unlawful because they made money for the bank rather than simply cover its costs. He got a court order against the bank in February. As the bank failed to settle the claim, Mullen got a warrant of execution through bailiffs, who are empowered to seize the bank’s assets.

The bank said it did not pick up the claim as it should have and did not file a defence in time and he was given a default judgement. It decided not to challenge the judgement, but said in a statement that it believed its charges are transparent and fair “and to say these charges are unlawful is inaccurate”.

These charges are now subject of discussion and even the Office of Fair Trading is expected to advise banks to cut down the penalties on customers or put a cap.

Mullen, working to become a chartered accountant, said he fought the case without having to move from his computer. He found advice on a website, www.bankchargeshell.co.uk. and with this information prepared his case and fought it through the Court Service’s site www.moneyclaim.gov.uk.

He had to spend 120 pounds to get an original of the court order and 55 pounds for the warrant of execution. He said these costs are recoverable as the judgment is in his favour.