It said sales of its four leading brands ­ Pall Mall Dunhill

It said sales of its four leading brands ­ Pall Mall, Dunhill, Kent and Lucky Strike ­ had risen by 17 per cent, boosted by a 42 per cent leap in volumes of Pall Mall. The US market remained tough, with group profits from the region down by 42 per cent. Mr Broughton refused to comment on whether the group was likely to close its factory in Burma, despite pressure from the Government to do so. “We have said we will give them a formal answer and we are not ready to do that yet,” he said.. The senior management team at Debenhams will invest more than £2m in the buyout of the business, it emerged yesterday as the department store retailer’s independent directors recommended a £1.54bn bid from venture capital group Permira. After tax, the management team will then reinvest £2.4m between them in return for a 6.9 per cent equity stake in the new company.The total equity being injected to fund the deal is just £30m with £500m of shareholder loans from Permira and its buyout partners Blackstone Group and Goldman Sachs. The remaining £1bn is debt finance provided by Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Citibank and UBS.Permira will hold 37.5 per cent of the equity, with Blackstone holding 20.8 per cent and Goldman Sachs another 20.8 per cent.

The remaining equity will be held by other senior Debenhams managers though it is not clear how much has been allocated to ex-Arcadia boss Stuart Rose who will be chairman.Charles Sherwood, a partner in Permira, defended the payments saying: “They are taking risk in the new venture and the management must generate a 12.5 per cent return on the equity providers’ money in order to recoup anything from their investment.”The board’s recommendation of the bid hardly represented a ringing endorsement. “The offer represents a proposal worthy of serious consideration in the absence of a higher offer being received,” it said.Debenhams shares rose 9.5p to 432.5p as the market bet on a higher offer from rival bidding group CVC Capital and Texas Pacific Group. Mr Sherwood said: “If there is no higher offer I think shareholders will accept it, as it represents very good value.”Mr Sherwood said the bid price was a 50 per cent premium to the 281p average Debenhams share price in the six months prior to the deal, although this period includes the worst of the recent stock market slump. The bid for Debenhams is thought to be the second largest UK private equity deal after Yell, the telephone directories business sold for £2.1m last year..

CRH, the acquisitive building materials group, has pulled off its biggest deal yet, paying €700m cash for Cementbouw Handel & Industrie, a Dutch DIY group and builders merchant. The transaction will take CRH’s acquisition spend so far this year to €1.2bn. It will also invest €47m for a 45 per cent stake in a leveraged buyout of Cementbouw’s building materials operations. CRH said the deal would not end this year’s acquisition spree.”Our financial capacity to make other acquisitions is strong, and our development teams remain busy; we expect to deliver a further good level of development spend in the remaining five months of the year,” Mr O’Mahony said.Cementbouw’s operations are concentrated in the northern and northeast of the Netherlands. CRH’s existing Dutch business is predominantly in the south.”Combining the two would give national coverage and provide opportunities for economies of scale, synergy in back-office operations and sharing of best practice,” CRH said..

The collapse of two big trials of revolutionary “antisense” drugs has hit sales at Amersham, the FTSE 100 company which makes medical dyes and laboratory supplies for medical research. While this was lower than many forecasts, the City welcomed the company’s forecast of 8 to 10 per cent underlying earnings growth for the full-year, and the shares jumped 39.5p to 490.5p – the best performance by a FTSE 100 stock yesterday.Antisense drugs are designed to attach to a damaged portion of a patient’s genetic make-up, disrupting malfunctions that have been linked to diseases such as cancer. There have been many failures by the drug companies trying to develop such products, and the latest two meant an estimated £5m of sales by Amersham were cancelled.Sir William Castell, chief executive, said the separations business grew 10 per cent if antisense work was stripped out, and the productivity of the biotech industry gave him confidence for the second half.. The stage was set last night for the break-up of Le Meridien after Lehman Brothers, the US investment bank, appeared to be inching towards a £100m deal to take control of the embattled hotel chain’s 126 overseas sites. It leaves the fate of the hotel chain’s 11 UK sites, which are owned by Royal Bank of Scotland, hanging in the balance.City sources said Lehman had struck a deal with Le Meridien’s lending banks, led by CIBC and Merrill Lynch, which would see the US investment bank team up with Hyatt Hotels to inject £100m of equity into the struggling business. Hyatt would take over the management of the 126 properties while retaining the Le Meridien brand, sources said.RBS, which bought the UK properties including the flagship Grosvenor and Waldorf hotels in a £1.25bn sale-and-leaseback agreement two years ago, is expected to bring in another hotel chain to manage the UK sites.The US groups Marriott and Four Seasons and France’s Accor are among the names in the frame to take over the management of the UK hotels, analysts said.It was not clear if RBS, which leases the UK sites back to Le Meridien’s management, plans to seek legal redress for any money it is owed – a move that would push the UK arm into administration. RBS is thought to have received rental payments up until 16 July.One source close to the talks stressed that a final deal could still be “some days away”.