Thursday evening business bulletin

Apr 24 2008 By Andrew Mernin

The owner of retail chain Sports World drew a mixed reaction from the City today, despite revealing it remained on course to hit earnings targets.

Sports Direct International described trading conditions as challenging across its business, but added that it was still confident of delivering the £148m expected for underlying earnings in the year to April 27.

However, analysts were disappointed by the company’s failure to provide additional details on sales and how it achieved the earnings figure.

A pay package of nearly £22m for Barclays’ investment banking chief came under fire from shareholders today.

Bob Diamond, the head of Barclays Capital, earned the sum in pay and bonuses after his division racked up £2.3bn of profits last year.

The haul represented a third of the group’s total profits and came despite investment banking operations suffering a £1.6bn credit crunch write-down in 2007.

Barclays’ remuneration boss Sir Richard Broadbent declared he was happy to be paying the US banker for ``world-class performance", but his package was questioned at the bank’s annual general meeting in London today.

Wife Swap and Scrapheap Challenge programme maker RDF Media today said it was in talks over a possible management buy-out.

The TV production firm said it had received an indicative offer from a consortium including the management team, headed by founder and chief executive David Frank.

Shares in the company leapt more than a third on the news, although the company stressed there was no certainty of a bid.

The potential offer comes after a turbulent year for the business, which was at the centre of a huge controversy last July over a re-edited trailer for its documentary A Year With The Queen - apparently showing the monarch storming out of a photo shoot.

The pound at 4:30pm was US$1.9710 compared to US$1.9785 at the previous close while the euro at 4:30pm was  £0.7942 compared to £0.8033 at the previous close.