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GE Capital, the financial services arm of General Electric of the US, abandoned its attempt to break up Halifax’s £1bn takeover of Equitable Life last night after the troubled life insurer rejected GE’s improved £1.5bn counter-offer.
Although better in headline terms than the £1bn deal agreed with the Halifax on Sunday, Chris Headdon, Equitable Life’s chief executive, argued that the bid was inferior because of the high degree of conditionality in the proposals.However, the fact that GE Capital was prepared to significantly improve on the £1.2bn bid it tabled at the weekend, is likely to fan policyholders’ concern that Equitable Life’s management has been bounced into a deal with Halifax on what they see as unfair terms.Under the terms agreed with Halifax, the high street bank is offering an immediate cash boost to the Equitable life fund of £500m. A further £500m will be offered on the condition that a deal can be struck between the two groups of policyholders drawing a line on the guaranteed annuity problem.Although GE’s new offer included £1.1bn of cash, Mr Headdon said that these payments were spread over five years and were subject to sales and customer retention targets that would not necessarily be met.He also pointed out that GE Capital had been reminded before it tabled its offer late on Wednesday night that the deal with Halifax was “binding and irrevocable”.Mr Headdon said: “For six months Equitable has been involved in the sales process and consistently been the lowest bidder. Now at the thirteenth hour, it puts forward a break up proposal that is highly conditional, contains elements which will work against the interests of policyholders and which has even yet to be approved by its board in the United States.”He also highlighted the fact that among the conditions attached to the GE Capital offer is one stipulating that Equitable Life does not break its legal obligations to Halifax. He insisted that given the agreement struck with Halifax is binding that condition cannot be met.Equitable said that the terms of the GE Capital offer included a £400m loan at 1.5 per cent above long-term market interest rates.

Equitable also claims that GE would charge a 25 per cent profit margin to policyholders for administering their funds. That is equivalent to £150m in today’s terms.Equitable also insists that GE has nothing like the track record in asset management of Clerical Medical, Halifax’s pensions arm. Clerical Medical will, under the Halifax deal, take over Equitable Life’s existing asset management business and manage the closed Equitable Life fund.. Land Rover said today that it is to cut up to 250 jobs at its Solihull plant in the West Midlands. Land Rover said today that it is to cut up to 250 jobs at its Solihull plant in the West Midlands.
A change in shift patterns has prompted the search for voluntary redundancies.The cutbacks, which come into force from April this year, will affect production of the Land Rover Freelander model.A Land Rover spokeswoman said the company was seeking between 150 and 250 voluntary redundancies as Land Rover Freelander production moved from three to two shifts at the start of April.She said the change to the shift pattern was the result of a shortfall in diesel engine supply.She confirmed that there was high demand for diesel-engined Freelanders, but said the BMW plant in Germany was unable to provide enough engines.Land Rover, which was bought by motor giant Ford last summer, escaped the threat of a pay strike after workers rejected industrial action in a ballot in January.A Transport and General Workers Union spokesman said its officers would be seeking urgent meetings to explore possible alternatives which may secure jobs.He said if there were to be job losses, the union expected they could be met through voluntary means rather than compulsion.. Workers at a Rolls-Royce engineering factory are today staging a 24-hour strike to protest against job losses.

Workers at a Rolls-Royce engineering factory are today staging a 24-hour strike to protest against job losses.
The company responded by calling for fresh talks, and said it was disappointed that the strike had gone ahead.Union members are picketing the plant at Ansty, near Coventry, as part of a campaign to halt the transfer of work to Canada, causing hundreds of redundancies.Rolls said there had been “considerable interest” from workers about switching to the Canadian city of Montreal or to Bristol.The Manufacturing Science and Finance union said there were alternatives to the redundancies, and the company had pushed its staff into the action.General secretary Roger Lyons said it had treated them with contempt by issuing compulsory redundancies and by refusing to listen to alternative proposals which were put forward.The strike was the first at the plant for 20 years.. For those tortured souls who think they need a miracle to understand the machinations of the internet there may at last be a source of divine guidance. Saint Isidore of Seville is poised to be declared the patron saint of surfers and computer programmers. For those tortured souls who think they need a miracle to understand the machinations of the internet there may at last be a source of divine guidance. Saint Isidore of Seville is poised to be declared the patron saint of surfers and computer programmers.
He lived 1,400 years before the information superhighway was conceived but his credentials are impressive.

St Isidore is believed to have been the first to compile an encyclopaedia, the Etymologies, thus making him “a seeker after knowledge”, said a spokesman for the Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. And he did it without bookmarks and browsers.”Patron saints are people who are intended to give an example and inspiration of how to live in the area that they are patron of and who you can pray to in times of difficulty,” said the Archbishop’s man, in the firm belief the saint could be useful to those cast into the wilderness by a sudden computer crash.The final decision on whether St Isidore gets the job will be taken by Jorge Cardinal Medina, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation of Divine Worship, after consulting Pope John Paul and bishops around the world.The Vatican is a believer in the power of the internet, having launched its website in 1996 to publish thousands of papal doctrines. Since 1998, the Pope’s speeches can be followed each week on a website fittingly powered by three host computers named after the archangels Raphael, Michael and Gabriel.. Like an ulcer that has suddenly flared up, the impending expiry of AstraZeneca’s patent on its lead drug, Losec, is starting to cause discomfort for the UK’s number two pharmaceutical company. Yesterday AstraZeneca warned the City that its short-term expectations of the firm were too optimistic. Like an ulcer that has suddenly flared up, the impending expiry of AstraZeneca’s patent on its lead drug, Losec, is starting to cause discomfort for the UK’s number two pharmaceutical company. Yesterday AstraZeneca warned the City that its short-term expectations of the firm were too optimistic.
Earnings this year were likely to fall within the bottom half of a lower range of forecasts than those in the market, AstraZeneca said.