Only a few days to go for submissions to the Government’s pensions White Paper. Two of the most important of these – from the Association of British Insurers and the National Association of Pension Funds – are handed in today, and intriguing reading they make too.For the ABI’s members in particular there is much at stake. Can Grupo Ferrovial and its rumoured partners of Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and others, be relied on to build on this legacy? It’s not readily apparent they can.Even if the Government were not already worried enough by the gathering treasure hunt by foreign interests among the biggest names in UK industry – can it be long before Rolls-Royce gets the knock at the door? – This latest endeavour raises more specific concerns aplenty.Pensions debate: a charging matterHurry, hurry. As professional investors in established infrastructure, the interests of these bidders would seem to be rather that of sweating the existing assets than investing in the exceptionally long pay back times of new ones.It’s no accident that Britain is home to the biggest low-cost airline sector in Europe; in large measure it’s down to the infrastructure put in place by BAA. It’s hard enough for a once Government-owned British company to navigate these waters, so goodness knows what Grupo Ferrovial would make of them.Then again, there is nothing that obliges BAA to build new runways and terminals at all, yet with capacity filled to bursting point, the national economic interest plainly demands it does, or at least that someone does.The Stop Stansted Expansion Campaign yesterday welcomed Grupo Ferrovial’s interest on the grounds that the Spaniards might be less inclined to invest in a second runway at Stansted than BAA. One is the peculiarity of Spanish tax law, which allows Spanish companies to offset the goodwill costs of overseas expansion against domestic taxes.It’s one thing for Banco Santander to use the tax break to help fund its acquisition of Abbey National, or even for Telef?a to do the same with O2, but when the target is the nation’s key airport authority, this effective subsidy from the Spanish taxpayer to their champions of the corporate stage begins to look more than questionable.Furthermore, there is no place in the world where it is more difficult to get approval to build new air transport infrastructure than the south-east of England.

Will the last British enterprise not to have been acquired by an overseas concern please turn out the lights. Is no UK company immune to the apparently insatiable foreign appetite for UK assets? You might have thought that BAA, with its key strategic position as owner of the country’s main airports, would be deemed nationally important enough to be one of them. Yet the Government gave up its golden share three years ago, and provided Grupo Ferrovial and its private equity partners are prepared to pay the requisite premium, there would appear to be nothing to stop them from walking away with the prize.
From a public interest perspective, is this entirely wise? We haven’t yet seen a proposal, let alone the detail of it, so it’s obviously too early to judge, but already there are key concerns. Other payments will depend on the performance of the shares.There was slight unease in the City at the prospect of the company lacking a finance chief. Sir Richard Evans, the chairman, praised Mr Batey as “the architect of the innovative two-stage rights issues which raised £1bn for investment in the business”.Philip Green, formerly of P&O Nedlloyd, arrives as chief executive designate in two weeks He formally takes over at the end of next month. United shares rose 19.5p to 700p, leaving the company valued at about £5.9bn.. The 52-year-old had held the role at the water and energy group for six years but was not offered the top job when it became available.
United declined to say whether Mr Batey applied to be chief executive, but insisted his departure was “very amicable”.

He will stay for the next six months before leaving after the annual shareholder meeting on 31 July.Mr Batey was paid a salary of £340,000 last year plus a bonus of £193,000. He will get a further six months’ salary when he leaves, United said. Simon Batey quit as finance director of United Utilities yesterday, two weeks before the arrival of a new chief executive. But it forecast a pick-up in the second half of this year as new Peugeot and Citroen models appeared, starting with the launch of the new Peugeot 207 in April.M. Folz said he expected the west European car market to remain flat and highly competitive this year but sales growth elsewhere, particularly in China, would continue at a fast pace.. Folz said the company’s ambition remained to increase margins to 6 per cent and produce 4 million cars a year but he did not say when.

Last year, it produced 3.39 million.The company said it expected profit margins for the first half of this year to be around the 2.8 per cent level achieved in the second six months of last year. The warning came as the French group reported a 22 per cent decline in profits last year to €1.94bn (£1.3bn) – a performance which its chief executive, Jean-Martin Folz, described as “mediocre and not good enough”.
Peugeot blamed the fall in profits in 2005 on a range of factors including intense price competition and the sharp rise in raw material prices, which added €340m to its costs compared with the €200m-€300m the company had told the market to expect. At the same time, the cost of complying with the latest European requirements on engine emissions cost the group almost €100m.The increase in costs more than offset €614m of efficiency gains and cuts Peugeot’s profit margin to 3.4 per cent compared with 4.4 per cent in 2004 and a target of about 4 per cent M. Europe’s second-biggest car maker, PSA Peugeot, warned yesterday profits would fall further in the first half of this year as rising raw material prices and the cost of complying with environmental directives took their toll.