Shoppers now have as much faith in a product saying Safeway or Sainsbury on it as one with Lever Brothers or Cadbury Schweppes on the label.For the supermarkets, the margin benefits are a dream. It makes Sainsbury’s Novon, the own-label washing powder which has successfully poached customers from the big branded companies. Oasis, the fashion chain, Stoves, the cooker maker, Kingsbury, the furniture group, and McBride, the manufacturer of own-label toiletries and detergents.Of these, McBride is the most intriguing. This is a company that has waxed fat on the extraordinary growth in supermarkets’ own-label products over the last two decades. Shoppers increasingly choose not the heavily advertised brands that their parents preferred but no-frills alternatives whose only imprimatur is the name of the store itself.The trend is already well established in food.

Across all food categories, supermarket own-label has captured 35 per cent of sales. Now, according to McBride’s chief executive Mike Handley, the same surge is happening in that bastion of branded products – toiletries and detergents, where own-label has till now only managed to capture around 20 per cent. Taking market share from the likes of Procter & Gamble and Unilever is quite a challenge But McBride has demonstrated it can be done. Mercury Asset Management is one of the more militant, cutting the commission it paid to NatWest Securities after another infamous flotation flop – McDonnell Douglas Information Systems.But memories are short, and the new issue market is starting to gather steam Four companies announced flotation plans last week. And it has certainly persuaded advisers who groom them for a listing to take a closer look before accepting the commission.I suspect institutions slap sanctions on new issue advisers more often than comes to light. Barings has gone to ING, Warburg to Swiss Bank and now Kleinwort Benson is being wooed by Dresdner Bank. We do demand this information for full listings, but it does not have to go in the prospectus.”.

AND THEN there were five. Britain’s dwindling band of independent merchant banks now consists of Schroders, Robert Fleming, Rothschild, Lazard Brothers and Hambros. highlights some areas which may prove troublesome to companies considering an AIM quotation.”Patricia Knox, the Stock Exchange’s press officer, said: “We have done this deliberately so that investors have as much information as possible because, unlike full listings, we will not be vetting the documents. Brian Damage, the chief executive, has three convictions for drunk and disorderly, while the operations director, Asa Skunk, was fined pounds 50 for indecent exposure and spent three months in prison for defacing government property.Mr Clark said: “This spoof prospectus.

As the rules do not specify that these events must be in the UK, advisers will have to spend considerable time and money trawling through records in every other country.To highlight the problem, Theodore produced a dummy AIM prospectus for an imaginary brewery, Spoofbrew, boasting such brands as Rocket Fuel, Wimps Stuff and Blimey ECK.Spoofbrew’s chairman, Lord Wobbly, is shown as having paid a pounds 5,000 fine for obstructing police and pounds 100 for a parking offence. Furthermore, Hertsmere has to prove the studios are necessary for the community’s well-being.”Hertsmere’s finance director, Jim Hill, said: “It is no surprise to us, and is what we have come to expect from Brent Walker.” A compulsory purchase order is granted by the Secretary of State for the Environment and any dispute is heard by the Land Tribunal. Hertsmere will now apply for the order to buy the studios, where Star Wars and Indiana Jones were shot.
Tim Quinlan, Brent Walker director for leisure and property interests, said: “It is not a threat I take too seriously I can’t see a council being in the film production business. The ultimatum, which expired on Friday at 5pm, gave the company 14 days to reply to Hertsmere Borough Council, in Hertfordshire, or face a compulsory purchase order. Prices are falling and unemployment has risen to nearly 3 per cent, which is very high for the country. Despite earlier forecasts of improving company profits this year, industry is seeing profits slide for the third year running. For the first time in 70 years, the Japanese gross domestic product is likely to have fallen over the last three months..

BRENT WALKER, the debt-laden betting to leisure group, has ignored an ultimatum to reopen the doors of Elstree Studios to film production. This found graphic expression in April, when Yukio Aoshima, a TV comedian and writer of sentimental novels, beat professional politicians and former bureaucrats to be elected governor of Tokyo. His only clear policy was to withdraw city money from two high- profile bureaucratic spending projects, including a scheme to bail out a pair of bankrupt and scandal-ridden credit unions.There are strong indications that the public is disillusioned with government policy which, since 1992, has diverted public money such as post office savings accounts into its Price Keeping Operation to support the financial markets.Pessimism is heightened by Japan’s underlying economic weakness. Their shareholdings are counted towards the banks’ capital adequacy, but analysts calculate that if the Nikkei falls below 14,000 the capital of many banks will fall below the agreed international limits for capital.As share prices fall, the banks and other institutions will be forced to sell more of their holdings, depressing prices and weakening banks still further.The official response would be to support the banking system, but there is already strong popular opposition to the idea of public money being squandered on bailing out banks. Conflicting pronounce- ments from different government departments in recent weeks have also done nothing to steady the market’s nerves.Much of the current pessimism is caused by the strength of the yen, currently standing at 135.96 against the pound, which is undermining the profit performance of much of Japanese industry.The falling stock market, however, threatens to set off a full-blown banking crisis as the large equity holdings of banks lose their value.