The company argued that its pension was among the easiest to understand had clear

The company argued that its pension was among the easiest to understand, had clear charges and involved no foot-in-the-door sales tactics. Its new product comes ahead of a report tomorrow by the Personal Investment Authority, the regulator, which will examine the effect of company charges and expenses on financial products.The PIA report is expected to show that in the two years since rules were introduced to force greater disclosure of charges, their impact has been limited.Eagle Star's pension comes in the wake of a series of similar product launches, mostly aimed at a growing number of people who prefer to do business by telephone.The company will charge a fixed pounds 2 a month on the fund itself, plus an annual management charge of 1 per cent. Unlike other firms, which operate a so-called "bid-offer spread" of charges of about 5 per cent, all contributions are immediately allocated to the fund. Both these innovations are identical to those on offer from Virgin Direct, the growing financial services empire owned by airline tycoon Richard Branson.Martin Campbell, product development manager at Virgin Direct, said: "It is good to see so soon after our pension was launched that other companies are trying to compete with us."Eagle Star breaks new ground, however, by promising potential policyholders that if in the first two years they are unhappy with the pension, it will transfer the money to a pension scheme of their choice, without charge.Steve Roberts, director of Eagle Star's new operation, said: "The personal pensions market has for too long been haunted by the dual problem of unclear charges and a high drop-out rate in early years."Our guarantee, together with the freedom to suspend contributions without penalty, means that early-surrender problems should be a thing of the past."Eagle Star's launch reflects its determination to reclaim the initiative after several years of sluggish financial sales The company recently installed a pounds 55m computer system. It has also cut staff by 30 per cent to about 1,500 people.The company hopes to attract consumers jaded by traditional hard-sell tactics or opaque products and increasingly attracted by cheap, no-frills financial products.Other companies to have entered the market include Scottish Widows, which saw telephone-based sales account for more than 20 per cent of its pension premium income last year.The new launches aim to compete with Equitable Life, which has for many years offered some of the cheapest products on the market.Its pension has no monthly fee and, although it imposes a bid-offer charge of between 4.5 and 5 per cent to meet setting-up costs, the annual management charge is 0.5 per cent, half the rate that Eagle Star imposes on its new pension.. TSB is hoping to turn the tables on retailers that have moved into banking by offering a home-shopping service as part of a new current account. The move comes as Sainsbury is poised to announce further details of its new telephone banking operation, the latest in a series of forays by retailers into the banking arena. The TSB Select account - which customers must pay a fee of pounds 3 a month to join - offers a hotline that will enable members to find the best price on more than 25,000 items including hi-fis, fridges and washing machines.As there is no catalogue customers must decide broadly which product they want before contacting the hotline.

The deals offered include those from manufacturers selling direct. The prices are compiled through database operator CUC Europe."Prices will be significantly cheaper than those available on the high street," claimed Peter McNamara, TSB's managing director of current accounts.TSB says it will make no margin on the sale of products but hopes to gain revenue through credit card transactions and finance deals. The account also offers a motoring service where customers receive a guaranteed pounds 500 off a new car.Rivals said service was unlikely to work. "We considered this idea but didn't feel it had sufficient appeal," said Gordon Rankin, head of personal banking at Barclays.He said TSB's idea was simply another example of "charged for" bank accounts.Barclays launched Barclays Additions in October where account-holders also pay a monthly fee. NatWest has since launched NatWest Premier.Mr Rankin said the flurry of launches would help establish the market for bank accounts where customers pay a monthly fee for a premium service. "The old method of having one kind of account for all customers is gradually giving way as people seek more choices."TSB claims that customers will recoup their pounds 3 a month charge if they make two purchases yearly..

Japanese shares dived yesterday to their lowest level for more than a year, hit by concerns about the weak yen and fragile economic recovery. The Nikkei 225 index fell by nearly 550 points to 18,896, taking its decline since the start of last month to 12 per cent - or about as much as Wall Street has risen over the same period. Analysts predicted that Japanese shares would slide even further as investors continued to move funds overseas for higher returns. Jesper Koll, Tokyo economist for investment bank JP Morgan, said: "The level of interest rates is so close to zero that everyone from Mrs Watanabe to Fortune 500 companies are putting their assets to work in another currency."Hiroshi Mitsuzuka, Minister of Finance, joined the chorus of ministers and officials trying to talk the currency markets out of sending the yen even lower against the dollar. It fell to 117, its lowest level against the US currency for four years, in Tokyo trading yesterday before recovering slightly "We want exchange rates to stabilise. We will continue to act properly against excessive currency movements," Mr Mitsuzuka said.The yen's recent decline reflects subdued prospects for the economy. The Japanese government recently predicted that the economy would expand by 1.9 per cent in the year from 1 April, its lowest official forecast ever, while the OECD has forecast GDP growth of 1.6 per cent this calendar year. Yesterday Salomon Brothers in Tokyo predicted expansion of less than 1 per cent.Gerard Lyons, an economist at Japanese bank DKB, said: "The economy has been locked into a low growth path and it is not going to break out of it any time soon." The need for structural reforms was offsetting any cyclical upturn in growth, he said, with deregulation squeezing profits and triggering cost-cutting by Japanese companies.There is little hope that the government can act to offset this economic frailty.

Official interest rates, at 0.5 per cent since September 1995, are as low as they can be.The recent budget has tightened fiscal policy, in the light of a deficit amounting to 4 per cent of GDP and a looming state pensions crisis.. Ron Baker, Nick Leeson's boss before Barings collapsed, yesterday lodged an appeal against a disciplinary tribunal's decision to order him to pay pounds 7,500 in costs, and face a public reprimand over his conduct. The tribunal cleared him late last year of four out of five charges brought against him. The Securities and Futures Authority, which is still bringing charges against Ian Hopkins and James Bax, two other former Barings executives, yesterday said it would not appeal the tribunal's decision. The decisions by the SFA and Mr Baker were made just hours before yesterday's deadline for appealing.Lindsay Hill, Mr Baker's lawyer at Fox Williams, said the appeal related to a narrow aspect of the tribunal's findings. "Mr Baker was reasonably content with what had gone before ...

but he believes there are certain factual inaccuracies [in the judgment] and he would like to see them corrected."These relate to the one charge in which the tribunal found against him, the supervision of the proprietary trading activities of Barings, which led to the reprimand and the order to pay costs.In November, Mr Baker took the unusual step of publishing the result of the tribunal before the disciplinary process had run its full course.The tribunal ruled in Mr Baker's favour on four of the five counts on which the SFA had built its case and allowed him to escape a ban from the regulator's registration lists, which would have barred him from working in the City.Both he and the regulator had the right to appeal within 10 days of receiving the written judgment from the tribunal, headed by Judge Colin Kolbert.The SFA now needs to appoint three judges to sit before an appeals tribunal and arrange a date for the case to be heard.This will delay publication of the official charges brought against Mr Baker and also those faced by Mary Walz, another former Barings executive who has also escaped a ban from working in the City after reaching a settlement with the regulator.. Peter Chambre has done a decent job at Bespak since moving over from Caradon to take the chief executive's post at the inhaler manufacturing group in May 1994. He has effectively cleared up the mess caused by an ill-fated contract with ML Laboratories and the mis-timed 1992 acquisition of Tenax, a US maker of plastic parts for medical devices. Yesterday's 46.5p jump in the shares to 527.5p on the back of better-than-expected half-year results to November is therefore well deserved. The figures also show that he is capable of moving Bespak beyond the recovery phase to generate real growth, even if the 43 per cent jump in pre-tax profits to pounds 5.03m on turnover up just a tenth to pounds 39.4m reflected the benefits of some one-off factors. The demise of the US patent over the ageing albuterol asthma treatment (better known as Glaxo Wellcome's Ventolin) led to the launch last January of three generic versions, all of which business Bespak won. Filling three new marketing pipelines, on top of those of existing customers Glaxo and Schering Plough, helped valve sales soar by 28 per cent to around pounds 15.4m in the half-year.Meanwhile, sales continued to build around Glaxo's Acuhaler, the second- generation dry powder inhaler launched in Scandinavia in 1995.Bespak's turnover in that product alone more than doubled from under pounds 2m to pounds 4.5m in the six months as the drugs giant rolled the product out across Europe.Mr Chambre says about half the first-half profits growth came from higher volumes inflated by these developments and concedes that growth will slow from here on. Even so, Bespak can look forward to cashing in on the continuing 6 per cent growth in the US asthma inhaler market and has plenty else to look forward to.The two-year restructuring of Tenax is nearly complete.