Column Eight: Getting a rise out of the rates

FOR FIVE heart-stopping minutes yesterday, interest rates were on the way up from the present 6 per cent. The Treasury accidentally announced, via the Stock Exchange's Topic information service: 'Minimum lending rate to be 7 per cent from tomorrow.'

The scoop hounds at the Extel news service, more vigilant than ever in the wake of the Christmas sacking of a dozen of their colleagues, immediately picked up the story and ran with it.

From 11.39am share prices plunged. Luckily, quick-witted Bank of England officials delivered the necessary ticking off to their Treasury counterparts and by 11.44 a correction was on the screens.

So where did the mysterious message come from? A Treasury wallah explains: 'Somehow it was in the machine that sends out the electronic mail and it attached itself - somehow, I don't know how - to today's (foreign exchange) reserves press release. It was, in fact, a sentence from last November's Autumn Statement.'

BOB SIRKIS, the former fast food chief in charge of Dixons Group's troubled US chain, Silo, has been sacked, replaced by Peter Morris, the Dixons property director. According to Dixons' boss, Stanley Kalms: 'He wasn't a bad lad, but Peter is better.' He says the compensation to Mr Sirkis will be 'notional' and 'not material'.

Dixons shareholders, who have seen Silo's losses mushroom under Mr Sirkis, will doubtless hope it is a good deal more notional and immaterial than the dollars 1m golden goodbye paid to the previous incumbent, Barry Feinberg.

THE SAGES of the public relations industry said he would never work in this town again. But a few months after being roasted by the Takeover Panel for his over-exuberance in trying to defend Dowty Group against TI's bid, Hamish McFall has returned to the world of financial PR.

His firm Burson Marsteller was lambasted by the panel for leaking incorrect information to stockbroking analysts. Soon after, Mr McFall, a former Tory parliamentary candidate, found he was surplus to Burson's requirements.

He has surfaced at Tavistock Communications, whose clients include Ernst & Young, Racal Vodafone and Theodore Goddard. Expect some interesting press releases.

MORE CUTS at Gateway, where David Simons, the former Storehouse director, is wielding the axe. A dozen computer systems staff are the latest through the check-out.