All regions generated double-digit profit growth, propelling group operating profits up €53.1m (£37m) to €285.7m, a record for the company. Strong advertising and circulation growth, combined with cost-cutting measures, saw operating profit at the newspaper group Independent News & Media rise 23 per cent last year.
The company, which publishes The Independent, said it benefited from owning papers in strong economies. However, like oil, prolonged demand remains dependent on China.. “In our view further substantial increases in output will be necessary later this year.”Elsewhere, copper futures hit record highs yesterday, as Chinese buying drove three-month prices through $3,307 a tonne in early trading.Investors have piled into metals, hoping that strong demand will drive prices higher. But Gary Ross, of Pira Energy, said: “This story is not about the fundamentals, it’s about the financials.

The investment community is looking beyond the short-term fundamentals and wondering whether Opec can meet forward demand growth without prices going sharply higher.”Kevin Norrish, an oil analyst for Barclays, said Opec would need to increase capacity again before prices would come back into line. He saidOpec’s actions would become increasingly important in determining oil prices this year.Mr Seetharamdoo added that while limited space capacity remained a concern in the short-term, additional supply could be provided if the price was right, through increases in production. The cartel said it would monitor the situation and “take appropriate and prompt action, when the need arises”.Julien Seetharamdoo, at Capital Economics, said Opec’s move to increase supply reaffirmed his belief that prices would gradually fall back into line in 2005. It added that its member countries had begun boosting their oil production.Soaring worldwide demand for oil, led by strong growth in China, has raised fears that Opec will run out of spare capacity, with its output already at 25-year highs. The main European markets also closed down more than 1 per cent.Although news of the increase in supply initially cooled oil prices yesterday, prices later soared after US government data showed that heating and petrol supplies had fallen in February.As well as agreeing to an immediate 500,000 increase in supply, Opec, the oil cartel, said it would consider making a similar rise again. The price of crude oil soared to an all-time high yesterday, edging past its previous record of $55.67 a barrel, in spite of the promise from Opec to supply an additional 500,000 barrels a day.
The oil price rally led the FTSE 100 to take its biggest hit since last August, falling 1.25 per cent to close at 4937.6.

Gyrus describes itself as a “laser razor blades” company, providing hi-tech keyhole surgery equipment, machines and blades that can cut and seal tissue as they go. It has specialisms in gynaecology and ear, nose and throat surgery, but has been slow to crack the much bigger general surgery market. That failure was being rewritten yesterday as caution, and caution is indeed the right policy when rivals include the mighty Johnson & Johnson and Tyco.Gyrus has a management that can be trusted. Its success in all but eradicating debt is just one piece of evidence of its attention to the fundamentals of cash control and efficiency.

It has found it can sell its machines, rather than needing to give them away and rely entirely on profits from the blades.This column has long seen Gyrus as a long-term winner (or a medium-term takeover target), although six months ago we advised waiting before getting on board. The shares have stayed flat since but it is now making unambiguous progress.. A move into equities 18 months ago when the FTSE 100 was languishing below 4,000 has paid off: Smiths’ £300m pension deficit has shrunk to £75m and the scheme is now 98 per cent funded.. Sales in Smiths’ detection division were up 10 per cent as it expanded into supplying ports, post offices and other government buildings as authorities fight the threat of terrorism.So assured is the company of its future growth for the rest of the year that it announced a rise in its interim dividend for the first time since 2001. While military spending on aerospace has remained flat, Smiths has benefited from contracts in the civil sector, with contracts for Airbus’s new 555-seat A380 double-decker airliner, and Boeing’s mid-sized 787 Dreamliner, which is due in 2008.Demand for detection equipment used in airports to find explosives, chemicals, weapons and contraband goods is increasing. Fears of a pre-election rise in interest rates receded yesterday as figures for the key wage bargaining month of January showed that earnings growth had fallen.
Official figures showed the labour market continued to tighten in the new year, but analysts said there was nothing new to prompt the Bank of England to raise rates next month.The data, from the Office for National Statistics, showed that the fall in the number of manufacturing workers since Labour won power in May 1997 fell just 1,000 short of the politically significant 1 million mark.The headline rate of growth in average earnings – wages, salaries and bonuses – slowed to 4.2 per cent in January, a five-month low, from 4.3 per cent in December. Smiths Group, the engineering and manufacturing company, says it still has plenty of firepower for further acquisitions despite spending nearly £500m on a medical equipment business last year.