Russia’s opposition to the war has strained ties between Washington and Moscow. There have also been disagreements over Nato expansion and US missile defence.Symptomatic of the tensions have been delays in the Russian parliament in ratifying the missiles treaty signed by Mr Bush and Mr Putin last summer. But leaders of the upper house asked the lower house yesterday to put consideration of the treaty back on the agenda, raising hopes that the last hurdles to ratification might be cleared.Valery Goreglyad, the deputy speaker, said: “This treaty meets our national interests in full measure, and it was Russia that initiated the conclusion of this treaty.”. DBS Financial Management was yesterday fined £100,000 by the Financial Services Authority for misleading advertising that failed to spell out investment risks to customers.

Investors were led to believe they had access to higher growth rates than were in fact possible from the product. “The FSA is fining DBS based on the contravention of regulatory rules by the previous management team, who have moved on elsewhere. It is very surprising that former management failed to improve procedures adequately,” Steve Pearson, DBS’s managing director, said.Ken Davy, the founding chairman of DBS who made £7m from the sale to Misys, now runs another adviser network, Simply Biz.The FSA also censured DBS for failing to have robust procedure for checking that its advertising material met the regulator’s standards. The person in charge of advertising compliance was not qualified to do the job and was unfamiliar with the product.The fine was the first the FSA has issued to a business for advertising failures. It is investigating claims that split-capital investment trusts were marketed by both financial advisers and fund managers as low-risk funds, when they were in fact highly geared to the volatililty of the stock market.. iTouch, the mobile information services group, has agreed to buy Movilisto, a Spanish and Portuguese provider of text message applications, for up to €60m (£40.7m).

This includes ring tones and screen savers as well as games, horoscopes, poems and jokes.Last year the business recorded pre-tax profits of €12.6m on turnover of €30.8m. The business has deals with companies such as Telefonica, Repsol YPF and El Corte Ingles as well as all three mobile network operators in Spain.ITouch said the deal would increase its revenues and accelerate its move towards profitability. The deal is earnings enhancing immediately.Ivan Fallon, the chairman, said: “The acquisition of Movilisto is a transformative deal, which will sharply accelerate iTouch’s road to profitability. It also establishes the group’s position as one of Europe’s leading value-added service providers and a key consolidator in the industry.”ITouch will pay an initial €35m for Movilisto, of which €5m will be in cash and €20m in shares. The remaining €10m is dependent on the company’s working capital at the time of the deal’s completion. A maximum of a further €25m in cash and shares will be paid depending on Movilisto hitting financial targets within two years.The deal was announced as iTouch reported improved figures for the year to 31 December.

Operating losses before exceptionals were cut to £16.2m from £16.8m.Independent News & Media, the publisher of The Independent and The Independent on Sunday, has a 49.5 per cent stake in iTouch.Shares in iTouch rose 3 per cent to 16.75p.. Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of Pearson, the publisher, picked up a £273,000 bonus for 2002, having voluntarily foregone a payout the previous year. In 2001, she waived a bonus due to her of £157,000, leaving her total pay for the year at £583,000.A spokesman for Pearson said the bonus for Ms Scardino, 55, was based on a “very strong” set of results for 2002, with earnings per share up more than 40 per cent. It also reflected group sales growth, an improvement in the working capital requirement and cash conversion, he said.The bonus was unrelated to the Pearson share price, which continued to fall in 2002. The company spokesman said the shares had performed no worse than the FTSE 100, which was down some 25 per cent, and the stock did better than the media sector as a whole.The company’s annual report, published yesterday, also showed that Ms Scardino had been awarded 362,000 shares last year, which she will receive in five tranches between 2005 and 2009 – the last four of these depend on Pearson shares hitting prescribed targets.All five executive directors were awarded bonuses for 2002, including £279,000 for John Makinnson, head of the Penguin books division.. Liberty, the loss-making department store in central London, has seen its trading hit by the closure of the Central Line, the congestion charge and the war with Iraq. Nick Mather, the finance director of Liberty’s parent company, Retail Stores, said: “The closure of the Central Line has definitely had an impact and the threat of war has deterred people from coming into the West End.