I know I can count on him to bring the Orange brand and vision to another level and fully exploit the synergies between Orange and France Telecom,” he said.Mr Trujillo, 51, will be based in London and Paris. He was chief executive and later chairman at the regional “Baby Bell” telecoms group US West until it merged with Qwest in 2000. He joined Orange’s board in 2001, and is also on the chairman’s council at the French telecoms equipment giant Alcatel. Orange also named Wilfried Verstraete, the former finance director of France Telecom’s internet business Wanadoo, as its new finance director. The Belgian will replace Simon Duffy, who is leaving to pursue other opportunities Both men start their new jobs on 3 March. In addition, David Hobley, a managing director of Deutsche Bank in London, was named as an independent director to replace Richard Lapthorne, who resigned last month to become chairman of Cable & Wireless.. Roger Wiggs, the former chief executive of Securicor, has landed a one-off bonus of £750,000 for heading up the cash services, security and private prisons group for 13 years.

“I think the feeling was that he had overseen such enormous growth in shareholder value that there should be a way to recompense him.”Mr Wiggs, who is still a non-executive director, oversaw the sale of Securicor’s 40 per cent stake in the mobile phone operator BT Cellnet, now mmO2, for £3.15bn in 1999 to BT. The payout was made just months after the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001. Securicor’s US aviation security business, Argenbright Security, provided security at Newark and Washington Dulles airports, where two of the hijacked planes took off.Securicor’s annual report and accounts for the year show Mr Wiggs also earned salary and fees of £226,096 for the year and other benefits of £19,170, taking his total package to £995,266, up from £551,811 the year before. The report said that the “special, non-pensionable” £750,000 bonus was made “in recognition of the significant outperformance in Securicor shareholder value” during the period when Mr Wiggs was chief executive.. Coats, the British thread company with a history dating back to the early 19th century, saw its shares jump 20 per cent yesterday when it said it had received an approach about a possible cash bid. Coats advised shareholders to take no action and said a further announcement would be made in due course.Coats is the world’s largest maker of thread with a turnover of about £1bn and production centres in more than 60 countries.

It has been gradually shifting its production capacity away from the UK towards lower-cost centres overseas. It has also been streamlining its business and last month completed the sale of its Jaeger and Viyella clothing operations to Richard Thompson, the former Queens Park Rangers chairman, for just £1. It is also looking to sell Dorma, its bedding business, in order to focus exclusively on threads.If Coats is taken private it will mark the end of one of the market’s most historic names.It traces its roots back to 1824 when James Coats, a silk shawl weaver, set up a mill in Paisley, Scotland, to manufacture sewing thread J&P Coats was listed on the London stock exchange in 1890. It merged with Vantona Viyella to become Coats Viyella in 1986.. Bank of Scotland has been fined £750,000 for putting 30,000 customers at risk of losing money and exposing itself to possible fraud. Bank of Scotland have now addressed these weaknesses and are paying compensation where this is due,” the FSA said.Andrew Procter, the FSA’s director for enforcement, said: “Such systemic weakness not only puts investors at risk but also increases the risk of fraud going undetected.”The City watchdog pointed out that BoS could have faced a much higher compensation bill if the stock market had performed better in the last three years.

The cost of compensation turned out to be lower because most customers lost money on their investments, so it did not matter that the bank’s computer system was suffering from delays in paying money into accounts.HBOS, run by the chief executive James Crosby, said in a statement: “Bank of Scotland’s customers had every right to expect that the administration of their PEP/ISA accounts would be done properly. That did not always happen and we have apologised to those customers whose accounts were not in order.”. I don’t see any problem with the role of the chairman, as long as everyone’s roles are clearly defined.”The Association of British Insurers also affirmed its support for most aspects of Mr Higgs’ review, which was commissioned by the Government to find ways to boost the role of the non-executive director in a bid to avoid Enron-style corporate scandals in the UK.Both bodies were keen to convey they would not encourage their members to crucify companies that chose not to comply with Higgs, as long as they could justify their decisions.Ms Farnish said companies just ticking the boxes off in order to comply would be “disastrous”. “We need an intelligent, thoughtful and pragmatic application of Higgs,” she said.Peter Montagnon, head of investment affairs at the ABI, said: “It does imply profound change, which will happen over time and needs to be handled with care to ensure it is productive.”. Fund managers of split capital investment trusts were yesterday told by MPs to compensate the 50,000 investors that were duped in to investing in the high-risk funds. It found that they had promoted the trusts as low risk when they were in fact highly geared to the fortunes of the stock market.John McFall, the committee’s chairman, said he was “highly disturbed” by the evidence they had received, and that investors had been misled.