New car registrations last month totalled 84040 a 52 per cent fall on the 177133 sold in February 1998 said the Society

New car registrations last month totalled 84,040, a 52 per cent fall on the 177,133 sold in February 1998, said the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). Change brings car sales slump SALES OF new cars fell by half last month compared with a year ago, according to figures published yesterday that highlighted the impact of the new bi-annual registration system. The Federal Trade Commission outlined its view of Intel's rise in a 50-page filing, arguing that the company had abused monopoly power and bullied three of its customers to maintain a stranglehold on its market.. "We are deadly serious about our networking- communications group."The purchase of Level One, based in Sacramento, California, comes after Intel agreed to buy the Internet equipment maker, Shiva, for $185m in October.Intel currently faces anti-trust charges by the US government, which will be heard in a trial starting next week.

The deal values Level One at $48.75 a share, an 80 per cent premium to yesterday's closing price. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of the second quarter. Intel is pushing into the fast-growing market for chips used in networking equipment, and Level One makes chips with built-in communications features that are used by most large network equipment makers to reduce the cost of their kit.Buying Level One gives Intel products for a part of the chip industry that is growing faster than its traditional microprocessor market."This plays into everything Intel is trying to do," one analyst said."We're continuing to look for other acquisition candidates," said Intel chief executive Craig Barrett. INTEL, the world's largest chip maker, has agreed to buy a rival US chip company, Level One Communications, for $2.2bn (pounds 1.4bn) in stock. Smaller companies are one of the few areas of the market where there is still good value to be had. As the active fund managers come back into the smaller-company sector, that will create its own benchmarks, and the passive funds will have to follow suit..

Most active fund managers are concerned in the extreme at the lack of value to be had at the top end of the market. They are sceptical about the merits of indexation, even though they have been driven to it out of necessity. There's been a massive correction and rebound in between, but in essence the FTSE 100 share index has gone nowhere for six months now, which is powerfully indicative of growing alarm about overvalued larger stocks.As yet, there is little evidence of attention switching back to the small cap sector, but it will come. Alone among the big UK fund managers, Phillips and Drew has remained entirely loyal to its active investment principles, and it has paid a heavy price in terms of lost business for doing so.It is just possible, however, that last year was the high water mark of the swing to passive investment. Positions held by many active fund managers have been greatly narrowed relative to the benchmark, if only because this seems to be the only way of keeping up with the overtly indexed passive funds Almost everyone is indexing in some shape or form. The authors, Craig Pickering, a former Treasury civil servant, and Brian Basham, a public relations consultant, describe this process as a type of collective mania, which of course it is. Even active fund managers have felt obliged to follow what Tony Dye of Phillips and Drew calls "closet indexation".