The government will push ahead with its much-maligned road pricing policy this week when it publishes proposals for pay-as-you-drive trials.

A draft version of the road transport bill will give local authorities the power to introduce road pricing in towns and cities. Ten areas in England considering schemes include Manchester and Birmingham, although ministers say a national scheme is at least a decade away.

The local schemes are seen as a precursor to a UK-wide network that would track the movement of cars by satellite or roadside gantries, charging about 1.30 a mile on the busiest roads.

A government-backed report has argued that a national road-pricing scheme could bring benefits of up to 25bn a year by 2025. Its author, former British Airways chief executive Sir Rod Eddington, has described the policy as an “economic no-brainer” in the face of widespread public opposition to charging drivers.

However, some local politicians have expressed concern over the trials and accused the government of “blackmailing” authorities into applying for schemes as a quid pro quo for greater investment in public transport. Manchester and Birmingham have insisted that pay-as-you-drive or congestion charge schemes will not be implemented without multi-billion pound investments in public transport.

As well as local political opposition, the trials will have to overcome public distrust of road pricing. Nearly two million people signed an online petition on the Downing Street website calling on Tony Blair to abandon the policy. The petition urged the prime minister to “scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy”. The petition described road pricing as “an unfair tax on those who live apart from families and poorer people who will not be able to afford the high monthly costs. Please Mr Blair - forget about road pricing and concentrate on improving our roads to reduce congestion.”

Ten areas have received government money to investigate schemes: Greater Manchester; west Midlands, incorporating Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Coventry; east Midlands, in a joint bid by Leicester, Derby and Nottingham; Tyne and Wear; Durham; Bristol; Reading; Cambridgeshire; Shrewsbury and Norwich. Manchester is the most advanced but the plan to charge motorists for using the city’s busiest roads will not be implemented until 2012 at the earliest.

The road transport bill will also contain proposals that are opposed by many privately owned bus operators. In a move that could roll back changes brought in when the bus industry was privatized 21 years ago, local authorities will be given the power to set fares, frequencies and timetables. Provided they can demonstrate that it is in the public interest, local authorities can establish new contracts with bus operators.

The legislation is driven by statistics which show that in 2005 bus and tram journeys rose by 1.9% in London, where Transport for London has greater control over operators, but fell by 1.2% in the rest of England. Bus operators such as National Express argue that local authorities and passenger transport executives need control of the roads in order to create the priority lanes which, they claim, would make bus services much more efficient. Some bus operators are more pragmatic. FirstGroup, the largest road and rail transport company in the UK, believes London-style bus contracts, where operators are paid to run routes specified by the mayor’s transport authority, will be too expensive for the rest of the country and the bill will be a “last resort” for local authorities.

“It is a last resort and if it is hailed as such it will keep the industry honest,” Moir Lockhead, FirstGroup chief executive said: “It makes sure that we do what we say we will do. But regulation for its own sake is a negative. Economic regulation does not improve traffic flows.”

Brian Souter, chief executive of Stagecoach, warned last year that the “dysfunctional” structure of local government would hamper the introduction of road pricing and added that passenger transport executives (PTEs) should have less power over bus companies rather than more. Citing the decline in bus use outside London, he said PTEs such as the ones that run buses and trains in Manchester and Birmingham will need an overhaul.

April 11, 2007 — The boom in mergers and acquisitions that made retailers and apparel makers prized targets, and resulted in ownership changes for marquee names such as Neiman Marcus, May Department Stores and Toys ‘R’ Us, is finally cooling.

In year-to-date figures, retail and apparel companies accounted for just 2.9 percent of overall M&A activity compared with a recent high of 8 percent for the same period in 2005, according to Thomson Financial.

At the root of the slowdown: Many of the best deals have already been done and valuations continue to rise - making future deals prohibitively expensive, according to financial data and interviews with bankers and investors.

“There is a question as to how many mega deals are left,” said Gilbert Harrison of the investment bank Financo.

What’s more, the value of retail and apparel deals totaled $13.9 billion for the first three months of this year, down from $23.5 billion in the year-earlier period, even as overall M&A has continued to climb.

The rush of private equity money, which only recently became enamored of retail and apparel firms, has helped to fatten valuations. As a result, an average acquisition for a company today in this group goes for 11.4 times cash flow, compared with 9.2 times during this period last year, Thomson said.

“These multiples preclude us from a purchase because the payback would be too far in the future,” Estee Lauder CEO William Lauder recently told investors.

The high valuations led CEOs to watch rivals sell out for higher and higher prices, leading more companies to go on the block. But when some of those companies failed to get the prices they wanted, the expected deals unraveled.

Recent examples include Foot Locker, the Jones Apparel Group, Pier One, Eddie Bauer and Timberland. Limited Brands is interested in selling its Limited and Express apparel divisions, but is unlikely to get the price it wants, sources said.

Though Claire’s was recently acquired by Apollo Management for $3.1 billion, the price was considerably less than expected.

“You have a bunch of deals in retail and apparel that didn’t work, and that has sobered people up,” said Peter J. Solomon of the eponymous investment bank.

Dealmaking for the group is not dead, though. In fact, the number of transactions rose to 125 year-to-date, up from 114 in the year-earlier period.

However, as one banker said, “Right now everything is being sold as if it’s a diamond, when in fact it’s only cubic zirconium.”

THE Iranian president arrived in Riyadh yesterday on his first official visit to Saudi Arabia, a trip that many hope will help calm sectarian tensions threatening the Middle East as well as conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon.

King Abdullah, the Saudi monarch, received Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the airport, amid rapid developments that threaten to further isolate Iran because of its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment.

This weekend, senior diplomats from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany are trying to reach agreement on new sanctions following an International Atomic Energy Agency report last month that Iran was expanding enrichment instead of suspending it.

At the same time, the US has been beefing up its military presence in the Gulf. Although Washington insists it has no plans to strike Iran, it has refused to rule it out.

Regionally, most Arab governments - which are overwhelmingly Sunni - have signalled impatience and worry over mostly Shi’ite Iran’s backing of co-religionists in Iraq and Lebanon, saying such support can only destabilise the region.

Iran is a strong backer of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which is striving to bring down the US and Saudi-backed Lebanese government. Iran also has close ties to Shi’ite political parties in Iraq, and Washington accuses it of backing Shi’ite militias there. Arab officials have pointed out that, while Shi’ites are in the majority in Iran and Iraq, they make up only 15% of the world’s Muslim population, and sectarian tensions could ultimately work against the groups which Iran supports.

Dawood al-Shirian, a Saudi journalist, said the visit should be viewed with optimism.

“Saudi Arabia is not a politically bankrupt country looking for a show for its foreign policies. If it didn’t know that the visit would add to its political achievements, it wouldn’t have been enthusiastic about it.”

Saudi newspapers, which are government-guided, struck a welcoming tone in editorials, saying they hoped Ahmadinejad’s visit signalled an Iranian willingness to revise its regional policies and work with, rather than against, Arab governments.

The Saudi Gazette said the challenge facing the two countries was how to unite the Islamic world, which was in danger of fragmenting because of sectarian tensions.

“How did we ever allow ourselves to slip into this situation? What good is our [the Islamic world’s] common cause if we waste our energies and resources on self-destruction rather than self-preservation?” the paper asked.

Failure to address these questions, it said, would mean the Islamic nation falling “further into the abyss of irrelevance”.

Ghassan Sharbil, the Lebanese editor of the Saudi-owned Al-Hayat daily newspaper, described the visit as “exceptional”.

He said: “Ahmadinejad can invest in this summit to calm down the Arab world, the Islamic world and the whole globe to protect Iran against isolation, the dangers of an American strike and a new resolution by the security council.”

Iranian analysts believe that Ahmadinejad will reach out to try to ease regional tensions.

Independent writer Saeed Leylaz said: “Since Ahmadinejad’s harsh rhetoric is partly responsible for the cooling in relations, he is taking this step to redress [the situation].”

But Leylaz doubts the talks will achieve a major breakthrough, predicting that the visit “may help Tehran and Riyadh to maintain a higher level of contacts to deal with regional issues”.

Television pundit Hasan Beheshtipour believes that the Iranian president will try to put to rest “misunderstandings” between the two countries regarding Iranian influence in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon.

Nearly all Iranian newspapers simply published official reports that Ahmadinejad was visiting Saudi Arabia. Only one included some opinion in its report.

The daily Tehran-e-Emrooz, or Today’s Tehran, said Ahmadinejad’s administration was seeking improved ties with Saudi Arabia to increase chances of resolving the Middle East conflict without much US intervention and, at the same time, ease Saudi worries over Iran’s nuclear activities. “Trying to help improve cool relations between Saudi Arabia and Syria to resolve the Lebanese crisis ahead of the Arab League meeting is another goal of Ahmadinejad’s visit to Saudi.”

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