Inditex plans to open 150 to 200 new outlets, mostly in Europe.. Railtrack will today announce it is maintaining its final dividend to shareholders at a total cost to the embattled network operator of £140m for the year. Railtrack will today announce it is maintaining its final dividend to shareholders at a total cost to the embattled network operator of £140m for the year. The decision is likely to provoke outrage from rail passenger groups but it will delight Railtrack's army of small investors who have seen the value of their shares fall by more than a half since the Hatfield disaster last October.Railtrack will also publish its full-year results today, showing that it plunged to a loss of around £500m last year after taking one-off charges of £700m to cover the upheaval on the network following Hatfield.Critics of Railtrack will argue that it is insensitive and inappropriate to reward shareholders so soon after the company secured an additional £1.5bn in taxpayers' support and while the rail network is still not fully back to normal. But Railtrack has taken the view that a payout is necessary to maintain the confidence of shareholders and keep the company financeable. The dividend decision was taken at a board meeting yesterday morning. As a sop to passenger groups, Railtrack's chief executive Steve Marshall and his fellow directors are understood to have waived their entitlement to bonuses worth around £250,000. Last year Gerald Corbett, Railtrack's former chief executive, waived his bonus but other directors accepted bonus payments totalling £165,000.Maintaining the final dividend at last year's level of 17.6p will cost £90m.
Together with the £50m cost of the interim dividend paid last December, this will raise the total payout to shareholders to £140m.There are 514 million Railtrack shares in issue and it has 270,000 small shareholders who together own 18 per cent of the company.Railtrack's decision to raise the interim dividend to 9.75p came just weeks after the Hatfield crash and caused a wave of protest. Since then it has been under growing pressure to make a gesture by cutting the final dividend or scrapping it altogether.But one source said: "Shareholders have had to take a lot of stick. They have forked out more than £600m over Hatfield and seen the value of their holdings slump. Railtrack needs a cushion of equity in order to raise finance from the capital markets and that in turn means it has to retain shareholder support."Railtrack needs to borrow a further £4bn to finance the maintenance and renewal of the network. Taking its debts close to £7bn over the next two to three years..
On the face of it, the plucky little Belgians have won a famous victory with yesterday's High Court ruling that the Competition Commission acted unfairly in ordering Interbrew to sell its recently acquired Bass brewing business. Historically, the courts have refused complainants leave even to seek a judicial review of Competition Act decisions, let alone gone so far as to allow one to come down in their favour. Maybe it's the ever present threat of challenge from the European Court of Justice at work again. On the face of it, the plucky little Belgians have won a famous victory with yesterday's High Court ruling that the Competition Commission acted unfairly in ordering Interbrew to sell its recently acquired Bass brewing business. Historically, the courts have refused complainants leave even to seek a judicial review of Competition Act decisions, let alone gone so far as to allow one to come down in their favour. Maybe it's the ever present threat of challenge from the European Court of Justice at work again. But before Hugo Powell, Interbrew's beleaguered chief executive, rolls out the barrel in celebration, he needs to think about what the practical effect of yesterday's ruling might be.
