However, it foresees a no more than normal risk of crisis in China, which many analysts have feared will be the next market to fall victim to the continuing global turmoil.
In addition, the 16 per cent probability of a currency crisis, while above the normal 9 per cent, is down from its dangerous peak at the end of 1998. This had been elevated by the risks in Brazil, which duly proved correct.. RARELY has the usually sleepy world of regional brewing been so filled with the sound of gun shot. Scottish Media is offering 320p in cash for each share in Primesight, which has 5,700 six-sheet outdoor advertising panels, a 10 per cent market share. Shares in Scottish Media fell 7.5p to 850p while Primesight shares rose 31p to 316p. HE RISK of a fresh financial crisis in emerging markets remains far higher than normal according to Goldman Sachs, the investment bank. It has still to be decided how much of the new entrant’s network would need to be completed before it was allowed to roam.The delay, which has been caused largely by ministerial changes at the Department of Trade and Industry, was criticised for playing into the hands of incumbent operators.Sean Gardner of Martin Dawes, a reseller of mobile and fixed Internet capacity with one million subscribers, said: “Every three month delay means a few hundred thousand more customers signed up by the existing operators.”BT, which owns 60 per cent of Cellnet, was given clearance two weeks ago to bid for one of the new licences in its own right, enabling it to offer a combined fixed and mobile service..

SCOTTISH MEDIA, the TV and newspapers group, is diversifying into outdoor advertising with a pounds 35m agreed offer for Primesight, the poster advertising company. That compares with estimates of the cost of building a new mobile network of pounds 1.5bn to pounds 2bn.The new Universal Mobile Telecommunications System or UMTS networks will operate at a higher frequency than existing services, offering increased capacity and speed.This will enable operators to provide services such as Internet access, on-line banking and shopping, video conferencing, fax, e-mail and even broadcasting via mobile networks.In order to encourage competition against existing operators – Vodafone, Cellnet, Orange and One2One – Wills said any new entrant would be allowed to “roam” onto existing second generation networks.This would enable a new entrant to offer a nationwide service before their own network is fully built out. “The airline industry is weak and getting weaker but BA was the first to realise that and react,” says Chris Avery, aviation analyst at Paribas. The original intention had been to award the licences this spring but the Industry Minister Michael Wills told the Commons last night that the auction would not now take place until the second half of the financial year 1999-2000.
Mr Wills also indicated that it was the Government’s intention to offer five licences, including a larger one that would be reserved for a new entrant into the mobile market.It is expected that bidders for the new licences will have to make a deposit of at least pounds 50m. THE GOVERNMENT yesterday announced that the auction of third-generation mobile telephone licences, expected to raise up to pounds 2bn for the Exchequer, has been delayed by up to a year, writes Michael Harrison.

But BA’s competitors have yet to grasp the same nettle and get their costs and their capacity down.Despite the abysmal share price performance, there are not many in the City who reckon anyone could have done a better job than Mr Ayling, so why eject the pilot now. There will be the same number of flights but they will be concentrated on fewer more profitable business routes.So is Mr Ayling turning BA into a two-tier airline, with one service for businessmen paying top dollar and another for backpackers, modelled on Go, its no-frills low-cost carrier?”BA is heading the way the market takes us,” he replies. If it wants a low-cost, short- haul airline based at Stansted, that’s what we will do as well.”Unfortunately, the transformation Mr Ayling has wrought at BA has been overshadowed by the savage downturn in the market, which was made worse by last year’s Far East economic crisis and the failure of BA to cement its alliance with American Airlines.But Mr Ayling takes heart even from this. “If it wants a high-yielding, frequent service long haul airline aimed at business passengers, that is what we will offer. That gives the customer the whip hand and forces the airlines to offer very competitive fares Now these passengers will politely be asked to go elsewhere. At present 60 per cent of BA’s passengers are point-to-point and 40 per cent are transfer. The aim is to get that ratio up to 70:30 – the exact mirror image of competitors such as KLM and Lufthansa.Likewise, BA is preparing to slim down its network of 80 European routes – which have only ever been marginally profitable but were used for feeder traffic.

He has at least half a dozen different ways of getting there – via Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Milan or Brussels on six different carriers. Turn up at Heathrow for a transatlantic flight and the chances are you will be flying, not in a 747 but one of BA’s new Boeing 777s, which have fewer seats for economy passengers and more for business and first-class.”This means that we are now less dependent on transfer economy passengers where the yields are lower and the fares are not enough to pay for the cost of the aircraft,” says Mr Ayling. BA has cut back on capacity ferociously so that it will increase seating by less than 2 per cent this year.The Business Efficiency Programme is running pounds 100m ahead of schedule and Mr Ayling predicts BA will easily achieve its target of pounds 1bn in efficiency savings by 2000-2001.Furthermore, it has reconfigured its fleet to concentrate on the more lucrative end of the long-haul market. “I’m not a candidate for the manager of the England football team or any other job you care to mention for that matter,” he says.