Mr Stewart was one of Astec’s three executive directors who was voted off the board by Emerson at an extraordinary general meeting last week.A spokesman for Emerson said that Astec had a limit of 10 directors, requiring it to replace three directors with its own appointees to get a majority. The move prompted a sharp fall in Astec’s share price.Emerson said it rejected the allegations and that it was seeking to have the petition dismissed. The company yesterday applied to the High Court to strike out the proceedings.In a further development, Astec announced that it would ask for Neal Stewart, the group’s technical director who was one of the company’s founders, to be reinstated to the board at the company’s annual general meeting. The institutions have argued that Emerson’s threat to cut the dividend unfairly prejudices their interests. They also allege that a director nominated by Emerson forced the company to report a lower interim profit figure last August. Emerson had previously threatened the company’s minority shareholders that it was considering cutting the dividend completely.Astec’s final dividend has been revised from 1.41p to 1.25p, making a total dividend of 1.94p.

This is still an increase of 7.8 per cent over 1996.Last night, City experts said the move was a clear attempt by Emerson to undermine the court case that institutional shareholders in Astec have started against the US company. Meanwhile, Emerson also revealed that talks with Astec’s independent directors about securing their recommendation for an offer had broken down. Emerson and its advisers are understood to have been willing to offer about 118p per share, compared to an earlier indicative offer of 111p. However, Astec’s independent directors had held out for more.
“These discussions have now been terminated,” Emerson said yesterday. The news pushed Astec shares down 4p to 117p.In a statement, Astec’s board, which is now controlled by Emerson nominees, said it had decided to pay a final dividend. The BBC is already a monopoly broadcaster in the UK with nearly a half of the total TV and radio market. That’s enough for any organisation, even one producing such lasting monuments of our age as Teletubbies and Eastenders.

Nothing would be gained by attempting to make it more dominant still The BBC is perfectly all right as it is, thanks very much.. EMERSON Electric, the US giant which is battling to take full control of Astec (BSR), the electronic components group, yesterday changed its stance on Astec’s dividend and board in an attempt to improve its chances of winning the long-running battle with Astec’s minority shareholders. I saw you with soap all over your hands and about half way up your arms. I went back to the hall and waited to see if you were all right only you took ages and when you did come out you were drying your hands on your jersey just like you did tonight. The moment the BBC is removed from the public sector, a sizeable minority, possibly swelling over time to a majority, is going to start wondering why they should be paying a licence fee at all when they spend their lives watching Sky, down the gym or loitering on street corners.Furthermore, it is questionable that we actually want the BBC independently tapping the capital markets for extra sources of income. The virtue of the present licence fee system – which is unique to Britain – is its attributes as a flat rate tax, affordable to all, capable of funding a basic level of quality, public service broadcasting.

Removing the BBC from public ownership would allow the BBC to raise debt without affecting the level of public sector borrowing or going the whole hog of privatisation, though for what purpose the IPPR doesn’t say. And mutual ownership might make licence-fee payers feel more attached to the BBC as well as making the BBC more answerable to its viewers.
But in the end the proposal suffers from a fundamental flaw – you cannot privatise a tax without allowing people the right to opt out of it. That means less money for programming, less money for trouncing increasingly fierce competition. All the same, it is not clear that making the BBC into an institution mutually owned by licence fee payers – as suggested in a new booklet by the Institute for Public Policy Research, a left leaning think tank – would solve the problem There would be some potential advantages, obviously. The fixed licence fee means there is limited scope for growing revenue, which in turn necessitates spreading a fixed pool of money more and more thinly in the fight for audience.

Furthermore, from this year onwards the Beeb will be spending a tenth of its revenue annually on the conversion to digital. Unfortunately this unique, hypothecated tax is not all upside. That would have required Emerson to make a bid at 153p when it raised its stake last March above 50 per cent What the institutions would give for that price now.. Nobody doubts the size of the management task facing John Birt, director general of the BBC.