The proceeds, which include a €55m “early termination” payment to Corus, will reduce the group’s debts to about £1.2bn.Corus is expected to raise a further £800m to £900m by selling its aluminium business in the next four to six weeks. Outokumpu is also buying out the other minority shareholders.The deal, priced at €6.55 a share, represents a 25 per cent premium to AvestaPolarit’s market price last Friday night. The Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus continued to clear the decks yesterday in preparation for its first big acquisition by raising £360m through the sale of its minority stake in the stainless steel joint venture AvestaPolarit.
Corus is selling the 23 per cent holding in AvestaPolarit to its Finnish partner Outokumpu, which already owns 55 per cent of the business. Health Clinic shares bounced 11.5p to 80p, but remain well below the 142.5p level where they stood before PwC’s concerns arose.Mr Walker will be succeeded as finance director by Keith Fleming, who was managing director of Woolworths until January..

Turnover was up 58 per cent to £32.1m after five new clinics were opened during the financial year, taking the total to 19.Mr Walker said: “I have been involved in this company for five years, I love this company and believe in it, so I am not going. These comprised the timing of proceeds from a sale and leaseback deal, the recognition of sales of contact lenses, and the effects of two new accounting rules.The company – whose non-executives include the Vodafone chairman, Lord MacLaurin, and Alan Smith, chairman of Mothercare – insisted the changes did not affect the underlying business. It has not yet been decided if he will have his pay cut.The company’s auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, took issue with Mr Walker’s accounting decisions. The finance director of Health Clinic, a fast-growing chain of opticians, has quit after the company’s auditors forced changes to its annual results.
Health Clinic finally posted an £800,000 pre-tax loss yesterday, more than a week after being forced to delay the figures, which had been expected to show a £2.5m profit.Graeme Walker will stand down as finance director at the end of this month, although he will remain with Health Clinic in what the company described as “project roles”. But the group said it planned to delist from AIM given “the current economic and market environment”.. The directors hope to conclude the refinancing talks shortly and then publish its accounts.Cyberes, a discount air fares specialist worth £6.7m, said it had been suspendedwhile it tried to arrange a fundraising that led it to delay its accounts.Internet investment group i-spire, however, said it hoped to release its results by the end of the month. The previous record number of suspensions in one day was four.Failing to file accounts on time can be a sign of serious trouble, analysts said, as well as being a headache for investors with shares in the companies that they can no longer trade on the market.Mettoni, a network solutions business valued at £3.2m, said its results had not been finalised “pending the outcome of discussions with certain financial institutions relating to the financing of the company”.

The deadline for companies with year-ends or half-year ends of 31 December to report their finances fell on Sunday.The nine suspended companies were: Constellation Corporation, Cyberes, Einstein Group, Equator, i-spire, Mettoni, Offshore Tool and Energy, Radio First and World Sport. A record nine companies were suspended from trading yesterday on London’s junior share market, the Alternative Investment Market, after failing to file their financial results within the time allowed under listing rules.
AIM gives companies six months to file their accounts from the last day of the trading period under review. It added that security costs for the show had risen by 50 per cent to £700,000 with the introduction of metal and explosives detectors while increased insurance premiums would take the bill to well over £1m.. This year it expects 20,000 direct job losses and a further 20,000 in supply companies while civil aerospace sales are forecast to fall by 20 per cent or £2.2bn.Aircraft orders at this year’s Farnborough Air Show, which begins in three weeks, will be nowhere near the $52bn announced last year, said the SBAC. The leaders of Britain’s aerospace industry yesterday launched an attack on government red tape and tax rises after warning that 40,000 jobs and orders worth more than £2bn will disappear this year. A smaller mission of 500 peace-keepers from the EU is due to take over at the end of the year, with the job of training and supervising the domestic police force..