We don’t intend to keep coming back to the market every year,” said Mr Good.. Lloyd’s of London yesterday announced it has created a special post to deal with the avalanche of claims the organisation is facing after the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon. That alone is a complex situation to manage, but even more so with a market composed of 108 separate businesses.”. Noddy and Big Ears, the children’s characters owned by Chorion, are set to feature in a Hollywood film under a deal unveiled yesterday.

They have a year to put the package together or Chorion can take the project elsewhere (and keep the money). The earliest expected release date for the film is 2004.The film will draw on a new computer-generated image of the rosy cheeked boy Noddy, which will replace the old stop-frame model previously used. The updated character will feature in a forthcoming 100-part TV series. Chorion has agreed TV contracts for the series in a number of countries and a UK TV deal is planned for this year.Nick James, the managing director of Chorion’s intellectual properties division, said: “We needed to rethink Noddy for the 21st century. Instead of the old jerky movement, Noddy is now fully animated.”Chorion also owns the rights to Agatha Christie’s books and yesterday said its partwork collectable series, launched at the start of this month, was so far exceeding expectations. Mr James said the profitability of this venture would depend on how many people took out subscriptions for the whole series.. Financial markets surged on both sides of the Atlantic yesterday after America’s chief central banker gave a strong hint the recession was over.

Yesterday Dr Greenspan admitted he overdid his pessimism with some “unfortunate phraseology” – a reference to his description of “significant risks” to the outlook.On Wall Street the Dow Jones index rose 120 points, or 1.2 per cent, while the technology-rich Nasdaq was up 1.5 per cent on upbeat remarks on the IT revolution. Market sentiment was also buoyed by a fall in new jobless claims.In London the FTSE 100 closed up more than 1 per cent, while the gains were reflected across European markets.In his testimony Dr Greenspan pointed to an imminent revival in industrial production and said the conditions were still conducive to household spending. He said companies were running down inventories at such a “sizeable” rate that they would soon have to build up stocks.He also cast doubt on the need for a fiscal stimulus package, saying it was not “critical”.In answer to senators’ questions, he said economic growth was close to zero but that the US economy was at a turning point. “We are just at this particular point turning, as best I can tell it In other words, we are close to zero GDP change,” he said..

Results from insurers across the spectrum of the market yesterday showed a mixed picture for 2001 as strong sales in life and pensions were offset by investors’ fear to buy equities in last year’s tough conditions. St James’s shares fell 7 per cent to 314p and L&G dipped 4 per cent to 162.5p.In the case of St James’s, analysts were disappointed with the fall in equity investments, which brought unit trust sales down by 9 per cent and life products down by 11 per cent in the fourth quarter. For L&G, investors took profit as one of the insurance sector’s most expensively rated stocks failed to exceed expectations on sales.St James’s pointed out that its results were still strong compared with some providers for the “mass affluent” who rushed into the market last year only to find that clients did not want to invest in the stock market at a time when it was falling for its second consecutive year.One high-profile casualty was the joint venture for wealthy clients launched by Merrill Lynch and HSBC, which was forced to axe some staff last year.. Carnival Corporation, the US cruise ship operator fighting a bid battle for P&O Princess Cruises, yesterday attempted to bolster its £3.5bn offer by revealing it expected cost savings of $100m (£70m).