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A non-compete clause between the two groups recently expired.BT sold Yell to two venture capital groups, Apax and Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, for around £2.1bn last summer as part of a drive to cut a then £30bn debt mountain.The deal also comes as BT prepares to face more competition in the directory enquiries service market after it is deregulated later this year. All of Scoot’s directors are to vote in favour of the planned sale and will unanimously recommend other shareholders vote in favour. Shareholders owning just over a quarter of the company have already voiced their support.Scoot said that once the deal had gone through, it would inject a separate trading business into the company, return cash to shareholders or possibly both. However, it said that if it could not realise shareholder value by injecting a new business within six months of the deal completing, its directors would seek a voluntary winding-up.. Business investment has slumped to it lowest level for more the four years, denting hopes of an upward revision to estimates of economic growth later today.

Investment has also been revised down every quarter for at least four years.”Big downward revisions to business investment are a symptom of continued corporate pain,” said John Butler, UK economist at HSBC.Analysts said the scale of the revision could knock as much as 0.3 percentage points off overall growth in the first quarter, which is already languishing at zero.As the economy contracted slightly in the last months of 2001, a downward revision would mean the UK was in recession, according to a commonly used definition.This would be a major blow to Gordon Brown’s claim to have avoided a return to boom and bust. However, the Chancellor’s blushes are likely to be saved by upward revisions to imports and government spending and figures showing that industrial production did not contract as much as first thought.”This reduces the chances that overall GDP growth for the past couple of years will be revised up significantly,” said Michael Saunders at Schroder Salmon Smith Barney.The drop has added another argument for keeping rates on hold when the Monetary Policy Committee meets next week, analysts said.However, separate figures showed households’ confidence remained at high levels in June, pointing to continuing strength in consumer spending. But the long-term revisions to business investment might have wider implications for economic policy, economists said.On one hand, it could reduce fears that a major over-investment during the boom years would discourage companies from boosting their spending when the recovery took place.It could also undermine hopes of long-term investment-driven gains in productivity over coming years.. The eight-year official investigation into Britain’s pensions mis-selling scandal is drawing to a close, with £11.8bn of compensation paid out to nearly two million people who lost out because of incorrect financial advice. The FSA has already fined 346 recalcitrant firms a total £9.6m.Pension providers have been forced to hand out compensation for bad advice given to consumers between 1988 and 1994.

Many people were persuaded to abandon company pensions in favour of new personal pensions introduced in 1988.In a considerable number of cases the move had a negative impact on people’s savings because by not joining or moving away from company schemes it meant losing out on pension contributions from employers.The FSA has forced companies to pay compensation to put this group into the position they would have been in if they had remained in their company schemes.Philip Robinson, the director of the FSA review, said: “The pensions review has delivered appropriate redress by our target date. We will continue to work very hard to ensure that the small number of existing cases are dealt with effectively.”The review has also taken in people who inappropriately opted out of additional voluntary contribution schemes, where 87,000 people have been judged to have suffered financially because they missed out on contributions from employers. Compensation in this area has amounted to £300m out of the £11.8bn total.Separately, Iain Duncan Smith, the leader of the Conservative party, said everyone who contributes to a pension is losing £400 a year as a result of the Government’s decision to end tax relief on dividends on shares held by pension schemes.Speaking at a conference with pensions industry figures, Mr Duncan Smith said: “I have a grave concern that an increasing part of the workforce is heading for retirement with the intention of relying almost entirely on state benefits. We will then face a choice between leaving people in poverty or diverting an ever increasing proportion of future resources to pay pensions.”The Conservatives have been stung in the past over their strategy on pensions, notably at the time of the 1997 general election, when the party was criticised for suggesting people ought to be allowed to opt out completely from the basic state pension. The party has now revised its ideas and wants to boost the state pension.. Salon , which describes itself as the “Web’s best newspaper”, faces closure unless it can attract new funding. The site’s owners have been forced to admit that their outspoken stance on political issues is alienating users and potential advertisers.
Salon ’s founder, David Talbot, has lodged an annual formal document, an “SEC 10-K”, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission explaining its financial plight.The pioneering, left-leaning website – which refused to comment on the move yesterday – recently claimed to have revealed the identity of “Deep Throat” of Watergate.Launched in 1995, it remains one of the last and most enduring of the dot dreams – an online current affairs magazine with writing that would challenge, possibly even outdo, paper-based publications.