Employers' organisations have consistently argued against tightening the law. Without telling the board or seeking advice from Deloitte & Touche, the company's accountants, the duo - later hounded out of the company by investors - decided to keep the information to themselves.While the FSA said it did not think either man consciously set out to break the listing rules, their decision "caused a serious delay in announcing price-sensitive information". By the time the company finally confessed to the £24.3m shortfall, its shares had collapsed and its future lay in the hands of its bankers.Mr Sants said the need to inform the market was "especially relevant" in MyTravel's case. The company said although the FSA's decision was based on a subjective assessment of what constitutes price-sensitive information, it was in the company's "best interests" to pay the fine.
The fine is one of the biggest for a breach of listing rules.Hector Sants, the FSA's managing director for wholesale business, said the discovery changed expectations about the group's performance. "The failure to announce this change denied the market the opportunity to assess the likely impact of these exposures on MyTravel's share price."The travel industry had a particularly bad year in 2002, as it struggled to persuade holidaymakers to board planes after 9/11. In May, MyTravel had shocked the City with abnormally high operating losses of £122.3m and a warning that it still had more than 1 million package holidays to sell.Tim Byrne and David Jardine, chief executive and finance director at the time, were alerted to the balance sheet exposures at the end of July but opted not to inform the market until November. The travel group, formerly known as Airtours, backed down from a dispute with the Financial Services Authority but stopped short of admitting it had done anything wrong. The FSA ruled that MyTravel had "breached the Listing Rules" by failing to update the market after unearthing a potential £24.3m hole in its accounts in the form of "balance sheet exposures". MyTravel finally drew a line yesterday under the accounting scandal that almost destroyed it, and agreed to pay the City's top watchdog a £240,000 fine for misleading the stock market.
There are thought to be only 100 left.Shell said its global investment programme would total £15bn in 2005 Its shares closed up 4.15p at 549p.. It involves the construction of offshore platforms and pipelines to a new LNG plant and export terminals on the island.The project has been criticised by environmental groups for potential damage to rare species as well as to local communities. Three months ago, Shell was forced to re-route the pipeline, which could eventually pump 140,000 barrels of oil a day, because it threatened the feeding grounds of the Western Grey Whale. He said: "We are consulting and discussing with appropriate stakeholders to enable this critical and challenging frontier project to come to an acceptable completion The exploration and production executive team ... always recognised the massive challenges of this project."Sakhalin II is the second phase in a project that began in 1996 and saw the first oil produced three years later. It said soaring metal prices, higher contractor fees and the fall in the dollar could double costs of the second phase to $20bn.
