There was no news on progress with European regulators which failed to approve Avandia in

There was no news on progress with European regulators, which failed to approve Avandia in October.Glaxo, which dropped a promise of 10 per cent earnings growth at its interims, posted sales and underlying earnings up 6 per cent at £8.5bn and £1.95bn. Strong performances from Flixotide, the asthma treatment, were offset by declines in US sales of Imitrex, a migraine treatment, and Zovirax for herpes. Relenza, the flu treatment, generated £16m in global sales.While Sir Richard said SB’s results were better than Glaxo’s, JP Garnier, SB’s chief operating officer who is to head the merged group, dismissed suggestions SB was the stronger company He too sought to divert attention from the shares “This isn’t a 100-yard dash but a marathon. We will be the most productive R&D department in the world and 25 years down the line that will reap rewards,” he said..

Halifax, the UK’s largest mortgage lender, yesterday unveiled a deal with BT Cellnet that will allow customers to access their accounts from internet-enabled mobile phones and personal organisers. Halifax, the UK’s largest mortgage lender, yesterday unveiled a deal with BT Cellnet that will allow customers to access their accounts from internet-enabled mobile phones and personal organisers.
The deal puts Halifax among the industry leaders as banks race to take advantage of new technology to revolutionise their contact with customers. The shares rose 6.2 per cent, up 26.5p to 456p.The Halifax chief executive James Crosby said it would introduce mobile phone banking from April using WAP (wireless application protocol) technology. Meanwhile, BT Cellnet was working on GPRS (general packet radio service) technology which will allow even faster access to bank data when it is introduced in September.Halifax coupled its announcement with news of two new directors, who it said represented the coming together of mobile technology, media content and banking. Charles Dunstone, managing director of the Carphone Warehouse, and Coline McConville, chief operating officer of Clear Channel International, the radio and outdoor advertising sales firm, will join the board as non-executives.High street banks have been racing to embrace WAP technology in recent weeks.

Bank of Scotland has its own mobile phone banking venture with BT Cellnet, and Woolwich launched a tie-up with Vodafone, the UK’s biggest mobile operator, earlier this month.Yesterday, NatWest, which is being taken over by Royal Bank of Scotland, fleshed out details of its WAP banking project with mobile phone operator Orange. NatWest’s UK banking chief executive Gordon Pell said customers would be able to transfer money between accounts and pay bills when the new service is launched in April.NatWest also revealed that more than 100,000 people had now signed up to its internet banking service, with new customers joining at a rate of 1,700 a day since the start of the year. Barclays said earlier this week it had 600,000 internet customers, joining at the rate of 3,300 a day.Abbey National will today unveil the name of its stand-alone internet bank, so far codenamed Aquarius. Abbey said yesterday that it had talked to venture capital firms interested in taking a stake in the internet venture, with a view to a partial flotation in the future.. Britain’s biggest tobacco company faced calls for an official investigation last night as it was accused of involvement in illegal smuggling operations. Britain’s biggest tobacco company faced calls for an official investigation last night as it was accused of involvement in illegal smuggling operations.
British American Tobacco (BAT) orchestrated, managed and controlled cigarette smuggling in Asia and Latin America in the early 1990s, according to evidence presented to a House of Commons committee.The claim was made as executives from the company, including the former Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, responded to the allegations at a hearing of the Health select committee.Documents unearthed from an archive in Surrey by the anti-smoking group, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and by an investigative journalist, Duncan Campbell, detailed the extent of the company’s involvement with the illegal cigarette trade, the campaigning group said.”While there is little evidence of BAT smuggling tobacco itself, there is compelling evidence to suggest that BAT is a significant part of a conspiracy which causes smuggling to happen,” ASH said in evidence to the committee.The group also claimed that two other British cigarette companies, Imperial Tobacco and Gallaher, had used Andorra as a trade route that allowed British-made cigarettes to re-enter the UK without duty being paid. As a result, tobacco exports to Andorra rose from 13m cigarettes in 1993 to 1,520 million in 1997 – far more than the principality’s 63,000 population could possibly consume, the group said.Mr Campbell also claimed BAT’s activities in Colombia supported the smuggling of cocaine, crack cocaine and heroin by providing tobacco products to countries that produced these drugs.Mr Clarke said that BAT, which produces cigarettes for overseas markets, would not take legal action over the claims, first made in The Guardian newspaper and on Channel Four, because that would lend them credibility: “We are the victims of smuggling where, by some channel beyond our control, our products go into the smuggled market and we suffer as a result.