Still, the now obligatory break fee is not big enough to be a significant deterrent to potential party poopers, and while this is not a merger that will have the City rocking in the aisles, nor is there sufficient reason for opposing it.ITV Digital’s collapseKeith Harris, chairman of Seymour Pierce, former City investment banker, and chairman of the Football League, cannot be much of a poker player. He seemed to think Carlton and Granada were bluffing when they said they would liquidate the company if the League refused to negotiate down the value of its contract to acceptable levels He was wrong. The League should never have signed up to ITV Digital, a start-up with an uncertain future, in the first place, and it has been na? in the way it has dealt with the gathering crisis.As they stand, the rights are hardly worth anything, and while Carlton and Granada may eventually be held legally liable for the d?cle, it will probably take years of litigation to see a payback Silly little League. As for ITV, it now seems inevitable that heads will roll over the affair Michael Green, chairman of Carlton, wants out anyway. His counterpart at Granada, Charles Allen, would by contrast have to be carried out in a box, but it may yet come to that.

ITV Digital has been a monumental failure all round and, in the meantime, the core ITV product seems to be fast disappearing down the pan Someone needs to get a grip. Will Mr Allen be given a second chance to prove himself? It will be interesting to see. He’s a tough and resilient operator, but the City is an unforgiving place.Interest rates on holdHeavy hints over the weekend from Sir Edward George, Governor of the Bank of England, that UK interest rates won’t be rising any time soon are welcome for any number of reasons. The economic recovery, if there is one going on at all, is still fragile. House prices and consumer spending have been roaring away, and there were some signs of a recovery in business confidence too. But that was before Gordon Brown’s Budget last week, which has put a dampener on everything.Business has taken another gigantic hit while for working people, there is the thought of all that extra national insurance kicking in next year to take the wind out of the consumer boom. Many companies will deal with the looming rise in employers’ national insurance contributions by abolishing the annual pay rise.

In any case, few of us are likely to feel better off next year. All in all, the economy needs an interest rate rise like a hole in the head right now.All of which helps explain why equity prices remain so subdued. The City consensus was that there would be some sort of a bounce back in the stock market this year, albeit not a huge one, but early summer has arrived and the stock market remains as flat as a pancake. Indeed, if you look at the charts, you see that equities are about the same level as they ended 1998 at, nearly three and a half years ago. The theory, widely propounded then, that equities were in for a prolonged and turbulent period of sideways trading is being proved correct.Stock market valuations ultimately depend on how much money investors think companies can make, and how quickly. At the top of the bull market, valuations reached extreme levels amid the general euphoria, and some pundits started to talk quite seriously about how the new economy miracle had made equities as risk free as bonds. The over-investment and indulgence of that period has yet fully to work its way out of the system.But there’s more to it than that.