And he had anticipated that any cash owing to the pension funds by those transfers would be replaced in the same year from disposals both here and in America.Mr Jones told the court that “the truth screams out” from evidence that bankers knew beneficial ownership of pounds 100m-worth of shares in the Israeli company Scitex had been transferred to RMG from BIM (Bishopsgate Investment Management), which administered the pension funds.He said the bankers knew and had documents that the court had not seen indicating that the shares had been transferred.Counsel also commented on the large amount of publicity about the case “That publicity has been a running sore to us, … Mr Alun Jones QC, in his final defence speech at the marathon fraud trial, said it was nonsense for the prosecution to allege that Kevin and his father and his co-defendants had conspired in the manner of Guy Fawkes and his men.
He told the jurors that many of the 80-odd witnesses called since the trial started in May had their own self-interests to preserve, and much evidence could be ignored.Mr Jones said Kevin would have liked to call more witnesses in his own defence, but they had declined to come to court.When he raised cash by pledging shares, alleged by the prosecution to have belonged to the pension funds, he believed ownership of those shares had been transferred by his father to the privately owned Robert Maxwell Group. Had Kevin Maxwell been caught with a jemmy and a blow-torch in the vaults of the Bank of England at midnight it would not prove he plundered the Mirror pension funds, the Old Bailey jury heard yesterday. The lenders are big banks, which in turn borrow from the gold reserves of central banks.South African producers have started to borrow more gold recently due to a tight profits squeeze. The price at which they can sell gold, which is fixed in rand terms, has stopped increasing in dollar terms because the country’s exchange rate against the US currency has been unusually stable.The increase in their demand for long-term gold loans has in turn triggered a sharp rise in banks’ demand for the short- term gold loans which are available from central banks..

Gold producers borrow – and sell – current stocks of gold against their future output. Investors with options positions to hedge were forced to buy in the spot market, lifting the gold price by about $4, with bids in the range $383.40 to $388 in early trading.
Andy Smith, gold analyst at the investment bank UBS, said: “You will hear a lot of people saying that something cataclysmic is bound to happen.”For some commodities, “backwardation” – a futures price below the spot price – is not rare, but it is virtually unheard of in the case of the gold market.The cause of this exceptional phenomenon is a sharp rise in the demand to borrow gold during the past three to six months.As almost all the gold ever mined still exists, the main activity in the gold market is borrowing and lending. The panic was exacerbated by hectic trading in gold options ahead of their expiry yesterday. The gold market was in complete turmoil yesterday. For the first time since a brief episode in the 1970s, the futures price of the precious metal fell below the spot market price “We’ve never seen anything like this,” one dealer said.

Separately, Forte announced the close of a deal it first announced before the bid, raising pounds 7.5m from the sale of a small distributor, Puritan Maid.. Possible bidders range from the brewer and caterer Whitbread to the competitor Road Chef. Foreign interest might come from the French caterer Accor or Germany’s Movenpick.Meanwhile, Mercury Asset Management, the largest of Granada’s institutional shareholders, bought 30,000 additional shares yesterday. Granada would have no choice but to sell the sites, for regulatory reasons, as it already owns 27 service areas of its own.It insists that it has identified potential buyers, but will not name them. The television, rentals and catering giant is borrowing pounds 2.5bn to help finance its share- plus-cash offer.There is also strong speculation that Forte is close to making several disposals, which could start to turn the tables on Granada: the White Hart to management, and the US Travelodge business.

A queue to buy the US Travelodges started forming long before Granada launched its bid last week.”At the end of the day, Gerry may have to save face and Forte save its empire by the two companies doing a deal over the Happy Eater and Little Chef chains,” the analyst added.There is also scepticism about Granada being able to sell the motorway service stations, and develop the Meridien hotel group that Forte bought earlier this year.Forte’s 22 motorway service sites might be worth between pounds 200m and pounds 250m But analysts warn that trading conditions are difficult. “And who would want to buy Forte’s 68 per cent stake in the Savoy group? Forte has spent 13 years trying to win voting control and has failed. And if there are plenty of buyers around for trophy hotels why aren’t the deals being done now?”The pounds 500m disposal plan is crucial to Granada’s financing of the acquisition, the company concedes Even after the sales, gearing will be 130 per cent. One leading leisure industry analyst, who declined to be named, said Granada’s chief executive, Gerry Robinson, “has really laid his reputation on the line”.
“It is likely that the top of the hotel cycle will be hit next year, leaving him a forced seller at a time when hotel prices will be falling,” the analyst said. Doubts are growing in the City about Granada’s ability to sell pounds 500m in assets earmarked for disposal should it win its pounds 3.3bn hostile bid for Forte.

Analysts estimated that less than 10 per cent of Eurotunnel’s revenues came from duty-free sales, compared with 30 per cent for the ferries.Ferry firms offer return day-trips for as little as pounds 1 because the on-board spend generates more cash than ticket revenues.. The company’s co-chairman, Sir Alastair Morton, estimates that this costs pounds 170m in lost revenues and puts Eurotunnel at a big disadvantage.Eurotunnel’s case was referred to the European Court in Luxembourg by the Paris Tribunal de Commerce.Similar action in the British courts was rejected in the summer, albeit on technical grounds, because Eurotunnel had failed to meet deadlines.Eurotunnel, weighed down by bank debts of more than pounds 8bn, said the EU’s decision to extend the sale of duty-free goods was against the free competition envisaged under the “borderless” single market.”Eurotunnel intends to campaign relentlessly to abolish intra-community duty-free sales before 1999 if possible, but in any case to stop the numerous abuses it creates and to prevent any extension beyond that date,” the company said.Eurotunnel’s finances had been based on the assumption that duty-free sales would be abolished in 1993.In September, Eurotunnel slashed duty-free prices by up to a third at its Folkestone and Calais terminals, a move the company claimed yesterday had significantly boosted revenue.But Eurotunnel still makes far less money from tax-free sales than ferries, which it has described as “floating supermarkets”. The Anglo-French Channel Tunnel operator is alleging unfair competition against Snat, claiming that sales of duty-free goods amounts to a “hidden subsidy”.
Eurotunnel is claiming compensation for loss of traffic and challenging the right of the European Union to extend duty-free sales until 1999, despite the creation of the single market in 1993.The company, which operates the Le Shuttle transport service and receives usage fees from Eurostar, can sell tax-free goods at its terminals either side of the Channel, but not during the journey. Eurotunnel’s fight against duty-free sales by rival cross-Channel ferries received an important boost yesterday when its case against Snat, the French ferry company, was sent to the European Court. Recognised as state-of-the-art, the technology would be introduced next August as part of the final phase of the “Sequence” modernisation programme.