Kingfisher plans to continue opening the larger format stores - there are 18 now trading.However, it is considering scaling back its refurbishment programme for the Supercentres.Analysts at stockbrokers Henderson Crosthwaite have slashed their forecast for B&Q's full-year contribution for the second time. This time it will be lucky to put in pounds 30m, analysts say. The hot summer stimulated demand for products such as garden furniture and barbecue sets, but not enough to offset weak sales of home-improvement items.Sales in the new giant B&Q warehouse stores have been reasonably buoyant, but not sufficient to offset weaker sales in the traditional Supercentre outlets. That triggered a boardroom clear-out, from which only Sir Geoffrey among the executives survived.B&Q, the DIY chain, has suffered badly in the six months to the end of July. Along with other DIY operators, it has seen demand evaporating since Easter and margins narrowed accordingly.B&Q contributed operating profits of pounds 44.5m in the 1994 half-year. According to one source, a candidate has been found but he is unlikely to be signed up in time for the interim statement.Sir Nigel Mobbs has been acting chairman since the demotion of Sir Geoffrey Mulcahy in January, after the group shocked investors with a profits warning. The depressed housing market has hit sales and margins at B&Q, Kingfisher's most important chain, which has been embarrassed by a stubborn build- up of stocks, both in the stores and in the central warehouses. Meanwhile, Kingfisher's prolonged search for a new chairman is nearing a conclusion.

But it will still come in a little above the pounds 70m-pounds 72m pre-tax profit figure now forecast by analysts. While it was set up by Messrs Myerson and Treger, for tax reasons, their only positions with it are as advisers.. KINGFISHER, the stores group, is expected to reveal deep wounds from the moribund DIY market when it reports interim figures on Wednesday. In the past, they have rescued Greycoat, the property company, and taken a stake in Shandwick, the financial public relations firm, where they say management is getting on with the job.About pounds 200m is invested in the Bermuda-based UK Active Value Fund. Their latest target has been Scholl, the foot-care group, which they also wish to sell off.Not all of their investments are hostile to management, however. City institutional investors were expecting a restructuring after the company renegotiated its banking facilities in June but it has not yet announced any action.A spokesman for Signet said the company had received no bids for its businesses, but admitted the chairman was not actively touting for them.Since they teamed up in 1993, Messrs Treger and Myerson have focused on companies where they think shareholder value can be increased.

The dissidents proposed to give ordinary shareholders 20p per share to encourage them to support the measure.Mr McAdam vigorously fought the proposal, saying it would not result in shareholders getting the best possible price for their assets. They wanted him to consider breaking up the group, which owns H Samuel and Ernest Jones here and Sterling Jewellers in the US, and to use the proceeds to pay off pounds 350m in net borrowings, pounds 100m in deferred dividends and the preference shareholders' pounds 350m. In the past, it has been supported by James Rubin of Sass Lamle Rubin, a New York investment firm, and other shareholders are now thought to have lost patience with the company as well.At an extraordinary meeting in May, Signet's chairman James McAdam easily saw off the rebels. Ordinary shares have fallen so low - to 151/2p at the weekend - that it is now worthwhile for preference shareholders to buy ordinaries just for the voting rights.Over the last few weeks, Active Value has bought 14 per cent of the ordinary shares, strengthening its position at the AGM. THE jobs of three prominent directors of the jewellery retailer Signet, formerly Ratners, may come under threat from dissident shareholders at the annual meeting tomorrow. Walker Boyd, the company's finance director, and non-executives David Wellings of Cadbury Schweppes and Lee Abraham of Liz Claiborne are all up for reappointment at the troubled company. Speculation is rife that preference shareholders, led by the South Africans Julian Treger and Brian Myerson of the UK Active Value Fund, will flex their muscles by refusing to endorse the trio.Although they have not put any alternatives forward for the positions, a spokesman for the fund admitted the directors could be voted down.Preference shareholders have most of the risk capital in the company but only 30 per cent of the votes.

The Labour Party wants the private sector to assume more of the risk.But experts say the key question - how the nuclear industry manages the waste it produces - has still not been resolved.Nirex had hoped it would solve the problem of disposing of low and intermediate level nuclear waste by 1994, thereby removing a barrier to further nuclear power construction. But plans to build an underground waste disposal site near Sellafield ran into difficulties when Nirex found that hydrogeological conditions in the area were more complicated than envisaged. The dump would store all Britain's existing intermediate and low-level waste plus that arising from the de-commissioning of existing nu-clear power stations.Nirex now wants to build a pounds 195m underground laboratory at Sellafield to prove the scientific case for a full-scale nuclear dump in the area. A public inquiry into an appeal by Nirex against Cumbria County Council's refusal to grant planning permission for this laboratory opened last week and is expected to continue into the New Year.. The Government's recent nuclear review ruled out building more nuclear reactors on cost grounds, thus limiting the potential future liability, while the operating performance of the the seven advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs) - once acknowledged by the old Central Electricity Generating Board as the least efficient in the world - has improved immeasurably.In addition, the eight ageing Magnox reactors that carry the largest liabilities will be not be privatised, but hived off to state-owned British Nuclear Fuels, although it remains unclear how future Magnox decommissioning will be funded.