National Express Group announced yesterday that its chief executive, Ray McEnhill, 55, is to retire early for health reasons, writes David Hellier. Sources close to the company said Mr McEnhill, who has spearheaded the coach operator’s recent expansion into airport and bus operations, was advised by his doctor to retire early following heart problems. For those subscribers on cable networks that provide free local calling, the Internet access will be free.Firecrest shares started their recent rise last week, on news that the company had won the exclusive right to Digiphone, a US-developed technology that allows users to make long-distance telephone calls over the Internet for the price of a local call.From just 67p, the shares rose to 158p last Friday.Originally a marketing and promotions company, Firecrest branched out into Internet-related businesses last year, when it acquired Nethead, an access provider.The company made pounds 415,000 last year, mainly from its music and marketing promotions in the national press.. The company said the service would provide coverage of 87 per cent of the UK immediately.
The service will cost pounds 7.99 per month, with no usage charges other than the price of a local call. The company was eventually fined pounds 750 and ordered to pay costs of pounds 7,500.. Marketing and Internet company Firecrest climbed 28p to 203p yesterday, on news of a deal with Energis, the telephone company owned by the National Grid, writes Mathew Horsman. The deal will initially allow 20,000 subscribers access to the Internet for the cost of a local call, but the limit can be raised at any time.

He resigned as chairman in July 1994, stating that this was the result of a policy difference over the future direction of the companies. At the time he remained a shareholder of the group.The company has attracted controversy over the years, especially when it emerged in 1994 that it was making around pounds 12,500 a day out of handling telephone calls connected with the Rwanda emergency appeal.Opposition MPs demanded urgent action, claiming that, although the company’s actions fell within Charity Commission guidelines most people would be appalled to learn that firms could make such profits.The charities involved in the appeal, said that using a commericial phone company was the only way to ensure all potential income was collected.Also that year the company had to suspend a telephone game offering a monthly top prize of pounds 250,000 after suggestions that it was running an illegal lottery. That market has since closed and the company has not indicated what it is planning to do.”The company was always going to be loss-making but the losses were greater than originally expected,” said a City source.Mr Scarr said the board did not want to make any comment The former minister became involved in July 1992. According to its last set of full accounts to June 1994, the company lost pounds 3.9m on turnover of pounds 2.3m Shareholders’ funds were pounds 1.5m. The company’s shares were traded until early autumn on London’s Rule 4.2 market. Talks are said to be currently taking place with a variety of City institutions.ITS was set up by the entrepreneur Nicholas Scarr and his cousin Anthony Tait.

DAVID HELLIER

Interactive Telephone Services, a company that used to be chaired by the former arts minister Tim Renton, is negotiating with its creditors and founders about a possible financial restructuring.
According to City sources, the company is short of cash and is discussing ways of injecting new funds into it. This commits the company to Livingston.”Shin-Etsu’s announcement is that latest in a series of investments in the area Recent foreign investment exceeds pounds 2bn. Scotland now produces 35 per cent of all personal computers made in Europe and electronic products account for 40 per cent of Scotland’s exports, worth about pounds 8bn. Constructionhas started and production should start late next year.The company will expand its range of silicon wafers – the basic components of computer chips .The investment brings total Japanese investment in Livingston to more than pounds 1bn.

Many of the wafers will be supplied to NEC, which is building a pounds 500m manufacturing plantnearby.Together, Shin-Etsu and Chunghwa have this week announced 3,500 new jobs in central Scotland, an area blighted by the shake-out of traditional “smokestack” industries.George Kynoch, the Scottish industry minister, said it was “another example of a company, which has already been here for a number of years, expanding its Scottish presence to take full advantage of the benefits which Silicon Glen offers.”Katsunori Kubo, Shin-Etsu’s managing director, said that the European semiconductor market was expanding sharply:”The project is a vote of confidence in our local workforce and we believe it will also have a beneficial effect on the local community, for the new jobs being created are high quality and long term. The investment comes three days after Chunghwa, the Taiwanese picture tube manufacturer confirmed a pounds 260m investment deal at Mossend, near Glasgow.The Japanese company, the world’s largest silicon wafer manufacturer, said it was investing in Livingston because of the success of its existing plant in the town which employs 300. JOHN ARLIDGE

Scotland Correspondent
Scotland’s Silicon Glen – the electronics manufacturing area between Edinburgh and Glasgow – won its second big investment of the week yesterday.Shin-Etsu Handotai announced a pounds 160m expansion of its silicon wafer plant at Livingston, creating 235 jobs. Microsoft and Intel were small once, and they walked off with the cheese.”UUNet is seen as a particularly strong player in the Internet market because of its focus on business customers and its alliance with Microsoft, under which it developed and operates an access network for MSN.. He fears the company’s rapid growth in the past 10 years may not be sustainable as competition in the Internet sector increases.According to John Sidgmore, chief executive of UUNet: “It is not necessarily true that the big guns will win. Well-capitalised companies such as Microsoft and MCI, the US long-distance telephone operator, have also invested heavily.The Microsoft Network was launched this autumn, helping to fuel the craze for Internet-related stocks.

But Goldman Sachs downgraded Microsoft in light of the “serious threat” posed by the smaller companies that dominate the Internet software sector.Richard Sherlund, author of the Goldman Sachs report on Microsoft, said the software giant had been slower than other companies to introduce products for the global computer network. “There’s an expectation that there will be high growth across the sector.” The best-known Internet stock of all, Netscape, rose $6.5 to $107.25 by lunchtime.The Internet, which can link computers around the globe, has attracted huge investment from hundreds of small companies in sectors ranging from access and navigation software to network development and graphics for “pages” on the Internet. Microsoft had been included ever since it came to market in 1986.Shares in UUNet Technologies, the Internet service provider, rose in morning trading by $5 to $95 on Nasdaq, and were still trading midday at about $93. The rise had an immediate effect on UK-listed Unipalm, the Internet service provider, which is being bought in an all-share deal by UUNet.In London, Unipalm shares rose to 110p to 865p, largely on the strength of UUNet’s share performance in New York. The US company has offered 0.154 shares per Unipalm share, and has recieved acceptances in excess of 90 per cent. Since the offer was launched last month, the offer has leapt in value from about 450p a share.”All the technology stocks are rising in New York,” said one analyst. But that decision is a technicality beside the task of preparing a convincing valuation of the company’s long- term waste liabilities for a City prospectus.