Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

City utilities specialists believe the move, allied to the fact AWG looks clearly undervalued, could trigger a takeover bid for the whole group.

Schroder Salomon Smith Barney has been appointed to find buyers for the company’s water interests in Chile, China, the Czech Republic, Thailand and Ireland.

AWG plans to return £500m to shareholders this month as part of a financial restructuring.

AWG maintains that it lacks the capital resources to compete in world water markets against large competitors like Vivendi and Suez of France and German-owned Thames in the UK.

It plans to focus on its UK infrastructure management business. AWG has already raised £1.76bn in a bond issue which would leave the company around 89 per cent debt-financed compared to 50 per cent previously.

ARM has expanded its technology access programme with the addition of four new US Partners.

Automotive Integrated Electronics Corp, eSilicon Corp, Intrinsix Cor, and ReShape Inc have joined, bringing the total number of ATAP Partners to 34. They extend the ATAP engineering pool to more than 3,200 engineers.

The ATAP programme provides a framework for selecting and enabling competent design centres with the ARM technology necessary for system-on-chip (SoC) designs.