Granada is planning to keep Forte's Travelodge and Posthouse chains.The company reported no lasting effects from the BSE "mad cow" beef scare, although sales at Burger King outlets at its motorway service stations declined sharply in the few days following the crisis.The end of the IRA ceasefire has had little or no effect on room occupancy, although Mr Allen said: "Personally, I was anxious about that." In television and rentals, results were at or above expectations. At some Forte hotels, some of it was not."In the hotels division, the company has reorganised operations into three - London, UK provincial and overseas. Granada has already shed 100 jobs at Forte, and expects to make further layoffs.Granada has also pushed prices higher at its hotels and restaurants But Mr Allen insisted consumers would be getting value. "If I have to pay pounds 15 for an afternoon tea, it had better be good. Mr Allen said Sir Rocco, who has been seeking financing to win back some of his hotels empire, would be welcome to make an offer.Mr Allen added that the company would easily reach its goal of enhancing profits from the Forte operations by pounds 100m in the first year, by cutting overheads and centralising purchasing. "There isn't the antagonism that there was between Forte and the Savoy," he said.The Meridien and Exclusive chains would be auctioned once a list of "pre- qualifying buyers" was determined. He identified a "strategic buyer" for Alpha, probably another airports catering company, and said a "buyer acceptable to the management and the owners" would be found for the 68 per cent minority voting stake held in the Savoy.The Wontner family, which controls the luxury hotels group, fought a long battle with Sir Rocco Forte, who had attempted a takeover.

Analysts speculated that Whitbread, the food and drink company, would be the leading contender for the Welcome Break sites.The stakes in Alpha and the Savoy would be sold by the end of the financial year, in September, Mr Allen hinted yesterday. Mr Allen said relations between Granada and the Wontners were good. Lord Hanson is, after all, not renowned for his socialist instincts.The folk at the CBI run a mile from being branded political animals, which is perhaps why they have declined to endorse your effort.But don't worry - you'll be seeing a lot of the president's council in the year ahead At least two of them are on your side.. MATHEW HORSMAN Media Editor Granada, the media and leisure giant, is in no hurry to sell off pounds 2bn worth of assets earmarked for disposal, Charles Allen, the company's chief executive, said yesterday."There is no timetable, and the real objective is maximising returns to our shareholders," he said as Granada unveiled its first trading statement since winning its pounds 3.9bn hostile bid for Forte, the hotels and restaurants company.He said the company intended to drive a hard bargain with potential purchasers, and would not do deals at low prices, despite having taken on debts of pounds 3.5bn to finance the takeover.Granada has said it would sell Forte's Welcome Break motorway service operations, its Exclusive and Meridien hotels and stakes in the Savoy Group and Alpha Airports, in order to reduce debt. Perhaps it has something to do with all that blue on the cover or the accompanying letter from Mr Major or the role of Sir Tim Bell in putting it all together.Or perhaps it has something to do with the booklet's striking resemblance to the last Tory party political broadcast and the cut of the other chaps who have lent their endorsement. It is sheer size and the complexity of shareholding structures that rule out a hostile attack among the big three banks.Colour-coding at the CBIMemo to Sir Colin Marshall: You may not take over as president of the Confederation of British Industry until May but the important thing to bear in mind always is that this is a "non-political" organisation.We appreciate that your Better in Britain booklet is designed to promote our economy and the joys of doing business here.But to the untutored eye it could look like a piece of Conservative Central Office propaganda.

For UBS and CS Holding even to discuss a merger is a breakthrough of a sort.If UBS were smaller, CS Holding might short-circuit the board's opposition with a hostile bid which - contrary to widespread belief - is not completely out of the question in Switzerland, in spite of the country's very different views on corporate governance CS Holding made a hostile bid for Bank Leu in 1990. The concern that something must be done is shared by the Swiss Banking Commission. This week's events may be the start of a long-winded process that does lead to some form of co-operation and rationalisation.By all accounts, the pressure within Switzerland to sort out the overpriced, overstaffed and overbranched banking market is very great. UBS appears to have gone further down the road towards rationalising its branches than CS Holding, which has recently bought not one but two smaller rivals in the home market and is in the process of digesting them. There does not seem much appetite inside UBS's boardroom for sharing the pain with another bank that has not done as much or as fast.However, it would be dangerous to dismiss the talks as ephemeral, or to see the leak on Tuesday as no more than a ploy by UBS to take investors' attention away from Martin Ebner, the dissident shareholder who next Tuesday plans to vote against the election of Robert Studer as the new chairman. On paper, the idea of what would essentially be a transatlantic alliance - because of CS First Boston's strength in New York - does look rather attractive for Swiss bankers with global ambitions.The problem is with the overbanked domestic Swiss market. The next couple of years will be hell if the merger gets off the ground.The rapidly emerging consensus in London and Zurich yesterday was that a full merger is unlikely to be achieved, regardless of what comes out of the UBS board meeting this afternoon.Brokers' analysts who attended a meeting with Mathis Cabiallavetta, the UBS chief executive, did not come away with an impression of a man raring to go in for some Anglo-Saxon-style financial engineering and corporate restructuring.The real difficulty lies not with integrating the investment bank offshoots in London and New York, where the synergies in corporate finance and equities may well outweigh the disadvantages in overlapping fixed interest and derivatives businesses.

This is hardly surprising.SBC's takeover last year of Warburg was a vivid demonstration of the pain caused by rationalisation in an investment bank. Large chunks of UBS and CS Holding's investment banking operations in London overlap.The consequences do not need spelling out for the highly paid employees of the two banks. At a stroke this would allow Mr Murdoch to send a digital satellite into space to beam back to UK homes. This in turn would free capacity on his existing Astra satellites, which are operated from Luxembourg, for use by BSkyB and its European pay-TV partners whilst radically extending the depth and spread of its reach in the UK through the much greater capacity that digital can handle.The Government amendment could, of course, also give the Mirror Group the ability to operate its own domestic satellite service, but the most obvious beneficiary is News Corp.Panic on the streets of ZurichAnxiety and alarm were rampant yesterday in the corridors of the Canary Wharf operations of CS Holding and the Broadgate offices of UBS, three miles away in the City of London. In BT's case Labour first has to deal with the small matter of getting into power It is only then that the hard bargaining will begin. Meanwhile the party can bask in the reflected glory that comes from being in the vanguard of the technology revolution. without actually having to deliver.In the case of Mr Murdoch, however, the Government already appears to have delivered on its half of the bargain.It may, of course, be pure coincidence that shortly after Messrs Heseltine and Murdoch hatched their plan over a discreet lunch six weeks ago, the Government introduced an amendment to the Broadcasting Bill that allows News Corp's 40 per cent-owned BSkyB full control of a licensed UK-based satellite service.

"I got off the phone five minutes later, and the Dow was down 80.". The politicians clearly believe that there are more votes to be garnered from the information superhighway than just those of the anorak brigade. Last October New Labour brought out its big gun in the form of a pledge by BT to cable up every school and library in the land for free provided it was given the right to broadcast entertainment services on its network. Now we know what the Government's secret weapon is - an offer from none other than Rupert Murdoch to place a satellite dish on top of every classroom in return for unfettered access to digital television - the technology of tomorrow.BT and BSkyB are serious players and their willingness to line up on either side of the political trenches speaks volumes about the opportunities, not to mention the profits, to be had from the superhighway.As an act on one-upmanship it must have given the Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Heseltine, much pleasure in signing up the News Corporation chairman after all the cosying up Tony Blair has done to Mr Murdoch.But on closer inspection there is something that differs crucially between the two pacts with BT and News Corp. They are going to find it harder to sell their goods abroad."Bonds were becoming increasingly attractive, said Mark Richardson, chief investment officer at Chase Asset Management. "It dawns on people that better values are in bonds."On Monday, stocks and Treasury bonds slumped more than 80 points on news of a 140,000 rise in the number of US jobs.The swiftness of the late sell-off yesterday left dealers reeling "The phone rang, the Dow was down 25," said one. The air has got to come out of the balloon."Stephen Mindnich, senior trader at Jefferies & Co, said: "Higher rates are going to scare some people and the stronger dollar is starting to hurt some of the multinationals. NIC CICUTTI US shares slumped yesterday for the second time this week, amid mounting fears of a dent in corporate profits later this year. At the close of business in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 74.43 to 5,845.98, its fourth fall in a row since reaching a record high of 5,689 only a week ago.Traders raced to position themselves in the last hour of trading last night, ahead of the producer prices index due out later today, in a repeat of the frenzied sell-off that followed last Friday's March jobs data.Analysts pointed to recent strength in the US dollar and the threat of rising interest rates, together with the highest bond yields for eight months,denting hopes that corporate profits will rise later this year.Scott Black, head of Delphi Capital Management, in Boston, said last night: "You have a two-edged sword cutting against you.