Even his close associates call him cold, hard and distant. But Sir Brian Moffat struck union officials at yesterday's fateful 75-minute breakfast briefing at his Mayfair HQ as genuinely shaken and nervous for a man of steel.

Europe's 'new affluents' targeted

BAA, Britain's largest airport operator, has a simple problem. More passengers are passing through its airports but the cash it is extracting from each is falling.

The British may be Europe's biggest home computer addicts, with more than half of UK households expected to own one by 2002, but it does not stop us getting fed up with the things.