Yet with just 100 properties, Macdonald lacks scale.Its 50:50 joint venture with Bank of Scotland to buy Heritage Hotels in April propelled it in the right direction, but analysts caution that competition is fierce for similar deals. Macdonald has already been pipped to the post in its quest to buy Posthouse by the mighty Six Continents (formerly Bass).Which leaves Macdonald nursing its predominantly provincial four-star hotel portfolio – which has helped the group to stave off the worst of the current industry malaise – and investing some £60m into the Heritage venture to improve the business mix.The stock, which ticked up 1.5p to 184p, lags its 1999 peak of 240p but solid interim results yesterday should propel it in the right direction. Pre-tax profits for the six months to 4 October were 7 per cent up on last year at £7m on sales of £70.4m. While room yields were down in properties in the South-east, the outlook was stronger. Analysts forecast a full-year profit of £16m which puts the shares on a p/e ratio of 10. Hold for long-term growth prospects.JarvisJarvis has managed to transform itself from a mucky old-style construction group to a sexy support services player and the move has paid off.It now operates in two main areas: rail maintenance and Private Finance Initiative work It has not all been smooth progress. The company was hit by a big short-fall in expected profits in 1999, when a Railtrack contract produced less profit than anticipated and the shares were punished suitably.

Since then, relations with Railtrack have improved considerably. And after the Hatfield train crash, Jarvis won the large East Coast Mainline contract. It is also part of Tubelines consortium that was selected as preferred bidder for one of the massive London Underground PPP contracts.Despite the political controversy, PFI or PPP contracts have found favour in the City. Yesterday Jarvis announced it had won another PFI deal, for a Birmingham health clinic.PFI provides reliable long-stream earnings – many of these contracts run for 30 years.

That’s impressive recession-proof visibility of earnings and double-digit returns on investment.. Ben Verwaayen (pronounced Ver-why-en), the new chief executive at BT Group, appears nothing if not well qualified for the task of dealing with a corporate basket case. He’s already worked for two of them – first at KPN, the Dutch telecoms operator, and more latterly at Lucent Technologies, whose shares are so far below water that Mr Verwaayen will not find giving up his share options to move to BT any great sacrifice. Whether this makes him a natural choice for the quest of turning around BT is not entirely clear, but his appointment certainly signals progress of sorts. Mr Verwaayen seems a worthy, if somewhat dull choice, but then Sir Christopher was never going to opt for someone who might in any way eclipse his own role in the great BT turnaround story, if that is what it is going to be.BT now has a new chairman and a new chief executive and it will shortly have a new finance director too, since the present incumbent, Philip Hampton, has said he wants to leave, the task of restructuring the balance sheet and demerging the mobile interests largely complete.