All of us are working toward it and talking to each other to make it happen. The Dutch government is being very open-minded and pragmatic,” he said.BT Wireless is also thought to be looking to fund start-up businesses with plans to develop applications and content for 3G mobile phone services.The company recently announced that its total customer base stood at 16.1 million including 10.9 million users in the UK under the Cellnet brand.However the company has changed the way it reports its figures, ignoring pre-pay customers who have not used their phones for three months. For the three months to June, BT Wireless added 492,000 new customers, a like-for-like increase of 3.1 per cent. The company now has 10.4 million active pre-pay customers and 5.7 million contract customers.. The Walt Disney Company confirmed yesterday that it was buying the Fox Family Worldwide group of cable television holdings from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, in a deal intended to dig both companies out of trouble as they seek to expand their media holdings and prop up their unstable stock prices. The Walt Disney Company confirmed yesterday that it was buying the Fox Family Worldwide group of cable television holdings from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, in a deal intended to dig both companies out of trouble as they seek to expand their media holdings and prop up their unstable stock prices.
Disney said it was paying $3bn (£2bn) in cash and assuming a further $2.3bn in debt from News Corp and its main Fox Family partner, Saban Entertainment.
Disney’s chief executive Michael Eisner hailed the deal as strengthening his company’s worldwide assets.The purchase, which includes such properties as the Power Rangers series, is Disney’s first major acquisition since taking over the ABC television network in 1995. It comes at a time when the company is under attack for failing to grow with the speed and technological innovation of rivals like Viacom, AOL Time Warner and Vivendi Universal.The deal also helps Mr Murdoch out of a hole as he struggles to find the cash to launch a takeover bid for DirecTV, the satellite service owned by General Motors.Haim Saban, the head of Saban Entertainment, had exercised an option to sell his 49.5 per cent stake in Fox Family back to News Corp; in addition to the cash from Disney, Mr Murdoch will now be spared having to pay off Mr Saban.Share trading in the two companies yesterday suggested the deal was considered a so-so move for Disney, whose shares fell 12 cents on the day, but a coup for News Corp, whose shares gained 67 cents. Analysts wondered whether the price Disney paid was too high.. A new e-mail virus is threatening to sweep across the country and send confidential or embarrassing documents to unsuspecting computer users
A new e-mail virus is threatening to sweep across the country and send confidential or embarrassing documents to unsuspecting computer users, it emerged today. SirCam is a more sophisticated version of viruses such as the so-called Love Bug and the Anna Kournikova worm, and it randomly selects files from a computer’s hard drive to send to every name in the victim’s address book. Potentially embarrassing or commercially sensitive material could be e-mailed to friends or clients.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant with company Sophos Anti-Virus based in Abingdon near Oxford said: “We’ve had hundreds of reports of companies being hit by this virus. “It comes as an attachment with an e-mail but it’s clever, not only does it scoop up confidential documents on your computer it sends them to everybody in your address book. “It may well send confidential company secrets or merger plans and at a trivial level your plans to get your boss sacked and take over the company.” He added: “It damages credibility and confidentiality and is much worse then deleting files on your hard drive.” The virus is activated by opening the attachment and could have originated from Argentina where a series of viruses have been produced, Mr Cluley said. It was first noted by anti-virus companies last week and has the added trick of changing the message in the e-mail subject line every time it attacks a new computer. Instead it uses the name of the file that has been taken from the computer’s hard disk. Mr Cluley said users should check all e-mails they receive even those from people they know.
He added: “If people up date their anti-virus software they should be protected.”. Things are starting to look a little tougher for Shire Pharmaceuticals, the UK’s fastest growing blue chip drug firm. Things are starting to look a little tougher for Shire Pharmaceuticals, the UK’s fastest growing blue chip drug firm.
Its second quarter results yesterday showed more stonking growth in revenues – up 32 per cent to $211m – but it is the last time these year on year comparisons will be so easy. The results contained a worrying smattering of bad news, on marketing costs, on sales of its lead product, and on its drug pipeline.The key concern is Adderall, its drug for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children, which accounts for more than 90 per cent of profits. Sales were up 56 per cent, but that figure hides a darker truth. Quarter on quarter, sales were flat, despite hefty price increases already this year.Rival products new on the market are competing hard and there was a scare last week when the Dutch investment bank ABN Amro suggested copy-cat Adderall could be available by the end of this year. That seems unlikely, given the regulatory obstacles, but Shire needs to launch a new-improved product soon.
