CWC refused to comment.The CWC deal is expected to enhance BSkyB's position as the dominant supplier of premium and pay-per-view channels and is likely to offset the loss of the Sky News contracts.Telewest Communications said it has also decided not to show National Geographic, the BSkyB channel that will replace Sky 2, an entertainment channel, from next week.The cable companies' move is a landmark in their bid to reduce their dependence on BSkyB for programmes, which has led them to complain to regulators, including the Office of Fair Trading, the Independent Television Commission and the European Commission over the last few years."This is a very significant move on the cable companies' part and should create a closer alliance between them and the BBC and other independent programmers," said Dennis Garrison, managing director of Knowledge TV, a business and careers information channel. Telewest said it will drop Sky News from its schedule as soon as its contract with BSkyB allows. Cable & Wireless Communications, the biggest, said it had signed with the BBC but would still show Sky News as well.Analysts this weekend were unsure as to how this squared with Friday's announcement by CWC that it would sign an exclusive agreement with BSkyB to carry its programming. The BBC will this week confirm reports that cable companies have agreed to show its forthcoming 24-hour news service, a move that will cut pounds 15m from BSkyB's revenues next year. A top salesman can earn over pounds 100,000 a year, mostly from commission and bonuses.Many customers are also overcharged because of the complexity of agreements to lease photocopiers, despite attempts by the OFT and the industry to make contracts easier to understand.Photocopier contracts normally have two main elements: the cost of leasing the machine and the cost of service.The cost of leasing can be hard to determine because a customer may not know the true value of the machine, the price at which the machine is sold to a leasing company, and whether the unexpired portion of a previous lease has been added as a top-up..

Telewest Communications, the second biggest cable company, said it will show the BBC channel in place of Sky News - for which BSkyB has recently increased charges by 6.5 per cent. "Old practices are creeping back, and some have never left," he said.A powerful reason for customers being overcharged is that the amount a salesman can earn is related to the value of a contract. According to well-placed industry sources, a reasonably experienced salesman, for example, can easily make more than pounds 50,000 a year, of which about pounds 20,000 is a basic salary. Mr Griffiths said: "The unfair contract terms legislation has failed." His comments came after it emerged that a private British company has entered negotiations with its supplier, Xerox, to cut photocopying costs from about 4p a copy to nearer 1p.

The Xerox concessionaire is demanding pounds 6l,000 to release the company from the lease portion of its deal.Adam Hackett, managing director of Chartwell Business Group, a leading photocopier supplier and servicer, believes that instances of overcharging by one means or another appear to be increasing again, after the photocopier industry introduced reforms in the wake of a 1994 Office of Fair Trading report into malpractices. At the meeting - which was standing room only - John Jenkins, the chief executive of JP Jenkins, the stockbroking company that runs Ofex, the share trading facility on which Display.IT was quoted, told shareholders that the shares would not be delisted in the immediate future but would remain suspended for another two-week grace period while the company attempted to sort out its affairs.The press and non-shareholders were banned from the meeting, which was attended by Peter Levin, the founder and former chief executive who left the board earlier this month.. Nigel Griffiths, consumer affairs minister, said he had received several approaches from companies with "horrifying" stories to tell after he appealed in the Independent on Sunday two weeks ago for information from victims of aggressive photocopier selling. Deceptive and high-pressure sales tactics by photocopier dealers are creating a rising wave of complaints from customers and demands to renegotiate deals that lock companies into unnecessarily long and expensive contracts. One of the areas the DTI will be examining closely is whether there has been any breach of Section 447 of the Financial Services Act, which concerns market manipulation of a company's share price.On Friday, caretaker directors of Display.IT, David Ward, and Dr H Hanif, held an extraordinary meeting at the company's offices to present plans for the future. His co-pilot, Mr Mandela, did much himself to soothe white fears but it was Mr de Klerk who took the bold decision to hold a whites-only referendum in March 1992 to seek approval for the "drastic change" he had promised upon coming to office three years earlier. The "pathfinder" inquiry will discover the facts behind Display.IT's share price collapse and its failure to produce evidence of a publicised sales contract with Alsina, a mysterious Luxembourg-based company, and establish whether grounds exist for a full-blown investigation into the company. The DTI has the power to ban directors, to prosecute for insider dealing in the shares of a company and for other criminal offences.

Asia has been a very important source of demand, and if that changes the pain will be felt throughout these industries," said Richard Kersley, equity strategist at BZW.. The Department of Trade and Industry has launched a preliminary inquiry into Display.IT, the troubled online financial company whose shares have been suspended, writes Richard Phillips. The company is building a cement plant in Malaysia which will increase capacity at a time when the construction industry in these countries faces a severe downturn.Operating profits from Malaysia-based Malay Cement in the first half of the financial year are expected fall by about 4 per cent in sterling terms from pounds 18m when Blue Circle reports interim results on 8 September."The shock to growth in the region will have important implications for industrial commodities like chemicals, paper and steel. "I do not think the Asian carriers are going to stop buying new planes, but the terms and delivery times may have to change to reflect ability to pay," said one.Among heavy industrial companies, Blue Circle Industries faces diminished profits from its building materials businesses in the region. "Of course we are concerned, but we aim to build enough financial leeway into contracts to avoid nasty surprises," he said.A spokesman for Airbus said orders for 19 planes worth approximately $1.2bn from Thai Airways, Cathay Pacific, China Southern and Sichuan Airlines would be unaffected by the currency crisis Transport analysts in London were more cautious. In foreign currency terms, in per capita terms, it will go down," he told a news conference yesterday.A spokesman for Thames Water, which recently signed a pounds 250m contract to install a modern water and sewage system in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, said that the company was monitoring the situation and cited a clause in the agreement that allows it to renegotiate if necessary.

Businesses across a range of UK industrial sectors will this week count the cost of the currency and market turmoil that has affected the economies of South-East Asia in recent weeks and which observers believe is set to continue. At stake for British business are a number of lucrative capital projects involving engineering companies, utilities and heavy industrial companies in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Analysts fear some will have to be renegotiated or even cancelled. While some strategic contracts such as British Aerospace's existing deal to supply 16 Hawk military aircraft to Indonesia are believed to be safe, infrastructure projects to modernise the region's water, power and communications networks may be scaled back to reflect the reduction in those countries' ability to pay in hard currency.In the Mexican peso crisis of 1994 the currency devalued by 40 per cent against the US dollar. A number of infrastructure projects involving British companies fell apart as a result.The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Chinese province's de facto central bank, is seeking to calm the turbulent currency markets by talking up the stability of the Hong Kong dollar in the hope of discouraging speculators from trying to dislodge it from its peg to the US dollar.The move follows Friday's reported intervention by the Sultan of Brunei, the world's richest man, to buy Malaysian and Singapore dollars which allowed both currencies to bounce slightly off three-year lows against the US dollar.Malaysian prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad dismissed suggestions from the IMF that the country should slow down its economic expansion to prevent the economy overheating."The country will have eight per cent growth, but that will be in ringgit terms. "A power greater than man has given South Africa the chance, the spirit to go forward in peace," he said, ending his speech with "God bless South Africa" and then the words "Nkosi Sikelele i'Afrika", the title of the anthem of black liberation..