They have fallen steadily from a recent high of 108p reached in early 1994, culminating in a loss of pounds 919,000 reported for the year to April 1995. In April, Ennemix defeated a hostile pounds 6.7m bid from Redland, the building materials group, which involved appeals to the Takeover Panel and disagreements about the valuations of Ennemix’s nine quarries and 16 concrete plants.. Heritage, a supplier of housewares to retailers and wholesalers, asked for its shares to be suspended yesterday pending clarification of its financial position. The group, which in November appointed former Woolworths managing director Jonathan Weeks to its board, is not due to report its annual results until October or November. “We won’t make a bid for Ennemix.” RMC plans to issue another statement to the Stock Exchange today.RMC is the third large construction company to show an interest in the tiny East Anglian-based quarries group. Lafarge’s move came minutes after the stock market closed and followed reports that RMC, another industry giant, had increased its stake in Ennemix to 5 per cent after buying more than 1 million shares in the market at Lafarge’s new offer price.
Lafarge said its UK subsidiary Norbrit yesterday bought 618,500 Ennemix shares and now speaks for 49 per cent of the company. Dealers noted another active session in the shares, which closed 4p higher at 55p.Derek Jenkins, RMC finance director, confirmed his company had been in the market buying Ennemix’s shares for the third day running, though he thought RMC’s stake in Ennemix now stood at “just over 2 per cent”.Dealers reckoned RMC’s move was an attempt to prevent rival Lafarge acquiring the 90 per cent of Ennemix it requires to mop up the whole group.But Mr Jenkins denied that RMC had sought to spoil Lafarge’s previous, agreed, 46p per share bid for Ennemix by purchasing stock through broker James Capel at 50p.”It is a strategic move,” he insisted last night.

The protracted bid battle for Ennemix, the aggregates tiddler, took another twist yesterday when French group Lafarge increased its cash offer to 52.5p per share, valuing the company at pounds 10m. The third directive is an entirely new one covering demand and supply, security of supplies and measures needed to avoid droughts.Mr Gardner said it was not yet possible to cost this directive accurately. However, he pointed out that when the urban waste water treatment directive was introduced it added pounds 44 to domestic bills. This figure was subsequently reduced to pounds 23 through efficiency improvements.The water industry expects to spend pounds 2.8bn a year between 1995 and 2000 and pounds 1.98bn a year from 2000-2005 to meet environmental standards under current EU directives.Mr Gardner said that the voice of water customers must be heard in Europe before any new directives were finalised.”We need to ensure proper and genuine consultation on this major tranche of proposed measures, and to see that their impact and effectiveness is correctly costed and the resulting charges implemented at a pace with which all customers, both business and household, particularly those on low incomes, can cope,” he said.Mr Gardner was speaking as the Ofwat customer council published its annual report praising the decision by a number of companies, including North West Water, Welsh Water and Wessex Water, to appoint non-executive customer directors.Three of the four companies in the east of the country had also agreed to adopt a binding mediation and compensation scheme under which the Ofwat customer service committee decides levels of payment.. The industry will be allowed to increase charges by an average of inflation plus 1 per cent for the 10 years to 2005 to meet an investment programme already expected to cost pounds 24bnUnder the draft revised drinking water directive, water companies may have to replace all lead pipes over a 15-year period, at a cost of some pounds 2bn. This would add pounds 5 to the average domestic bill.Proposed revisions to the bathing water directive would replace guidelines on water cleanliness with mandatory targets requiring heavy additional expenditure on sewage treatment, an Ofwat spokesman said. Water bills could rise by as much as a third to meet the cost of implementing new European Union directives, the head of the water-consumers watchdog warned yesterday.

Jim Gardner, chairman of the Ofwat national customer council, said the three directives under consideration in Brussels had enough financial clout to make it inevitable there would be a “substantial impact” on customer bills.
The average household water bill is currently pounds 218. But IBB sources said their soundings, particularly in the Pacific Rim, suggested that companies would not be influenced by a change of government.Their overwhelming view also was that Britain was committed to Europe and likely to end up taking part in a single currency.Of the total investments last year 46 per cent were by North American companies while 35 per cent were from Europe and 17 per cent from Asia- Pacific.. Expansion by existing investors accounted for 57 per cent of the 477 projects clinched last year, compared with 55 per cent in 1994/95 and less than half at the start of the decade.Mr Lang also denied that the Euro-sceptic wing of the Conservative party was deterring overseas companies from investing in Britain for fear of it becoming increasingly semi-detached from the rest of Europe.”I see no indication of any anxiety because the Government remains committed to Europe and the single market.”Mr Lang said that the policies of Labour would put inward investors off in droves. William Hague, the Secretary of State for Wales, is thought to have offered a subsidy of up to pounds 150m to win the project, which could create 4,000 jobs.The Koreans pointedly refused to confirm they had chosen Wales, although it now appears that the plant will be sited in Newport, Gwent and that an announcement is imminent.Scotland had been bidding to have the factory built in Lanarkshire while Ireland was also a contender.News of Mr Major’s intervention came as the Invest in Britain Bureau announced its most successful year yet with a record 477 inward investment projects in 1995/96 worth pounds 7bn-pounds 8bn, creating 48,000 jobs and safeguarding a further 97,000.In the past three years Britain has attracted 1,350 projects from overseas, creating or safeguarding 285,000 jobs.The biggest single investment was a pounds 1.1bn project by Siemens to build a semiconductor plant in the North-east – one of 58 inward investments from Germany.The President of the Board of Trade, Ian Lang, rejected suggestions that Britain was nearing saturation point after accounting for 40 per cent of all US and Japanese investment into the European Union.But he indicated that the number of new investors was likely to fall, meaning that the IBB would concentrate more and more effort on overseas companies which already had operations in Britain.

The move is understood to have been prompted by Downing Street’s anxiety to avoid unseemly squabbles between rival agencies and Government departments in the run-up to the general election, particularly on projects where large numbers of new jobs are at stake.
The Prime Minister is believed to have called in ministers from the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland offices together with representatives from their regional development agencies to emphasis the need for a co-ordinated approach.There was uproar in Scotland two months ago when it was reported that the Korean electronics giant Lucky Goldstar had decided to locate a pounds 1bn plant in Wales. John Major has intervened to prevent regional development agencies in different parts of the country bidding against one another for prestige inward investment projects. Mr Walrond said it would also be “hugely beneficial” for London as an international market if Crest was combined with the Bank’s Central Gilts Office in a single settlement organisation.. The dramatic change would be for institutional shareholders, who account for most of the value of shares on the Exchange but only 10 per cent of the work for registrars.Over the next few years, it is planned to reduce the Crest settlement period from the present five days, first to three days and then to immediate payment on delivery. Paper will have virtually disappeared for City institutions.Mr Walrond said the vast majority of small private investors would not notice any difference as Crest started up and dismissed fears that dealing costs would rise, saying the worst that could happen was that costs to small investors would stay the same.He said the workload of registrars such as Lloyds after switching to an electronic system would be unaffected since small investors, who own about 20 per cent of British equities, account for 80 per cent of the volume of work for registrars. By the end of April, more than 2,800 securities will be settled on Crest, representing 95 per cent of transaction volume on the Stock Exchange.

Shareholders, which includes the Stock Exchange with just 3 per cent, have put in pounds 12m equity, and there is pounds 17m of debt.The first five weeks of operation will be used to set up accounts in Crest and to enter data, prior to the first settlement of a share deal on 19 August.Mr Walrond expects about two-thirds of quoted British companies to transfer to Crest from October to December. CrestCo agreed to put a cap on the penalties to be paid by the registrars.Crest is the settlement system masterminded by the Bank of England when the Stock Exchange’s ill-fated Taurus system was abandoned in 1993, having cost the City as much as pounds 400m in wasted outlays.Crest, headed by Pen Kent, an executive director of the Bank of England, has so far had a direct cost – excluding spending by firms gearing up to use it – of pounds 25m, with a further pounds 4m to spend during the run-up period which lasts until next April. Crest will not be held up by contract squabbles and will be operational next week.”The contract disagreement was over who bears the cost of fines for delays in service if they are caused by the network providers. But Mr Walrond said he understood this to have been solved a fortnight ago and the remaining details were “not show stoppers”. These have to be signed at the same time as the contracts with CrestCo.But Tom Morrison, chief registrar of the Royal Bank of Scotland, which had been digging in its heels over the contract negotiations, said yesterday: “There has been some movement today and all the parties appear confident that it will be sorted out this week.”Ralph Walrond, managing director of Lloyds Bank Registrars, said: “I firmly expect all the contracts to be signed off this week.