Whichever way you look at it, that is a lot of off-peak savers and short city hops for Mr Souter and his sister, Ann Gloag, who started the business 26 years ago with pounds 25,000 in redundancy pay and just two coaches plying the London-Dundee route. "The DTI is trying to get in first and claim the patch from the EC," said Ulrich Bourke, a partner with City solicitors Clifford Chance. The airline had argued that the Commission had no power to examine alliances with other carriers outside the European Union.A BA spokesman said: "This is a welcome development. Rivals, including Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic, United Airlines, Delta and Continental are bitterly opposed to the deal.BA wants combined services to start next April, but had feared the EC probe would cause a substantial delay. It would give the combined group around 60 per cent of flights between Heathrow and the US and raise their share of the market on some routes to 100 per cent. The OFT is investigating whether the alliance effectively amounts to a merger despite the lack of any equity stake by either firm.

The US Department of Justice is also conducting an investigation under American anti-trust rules.The tie-up involves British Airways and American Airlines pooling revenues, marketing and ticket sales. I believe this will increase the possibility of reaching an early decision to provide all concerned, including third parties, with the maximum legal certainty."DTI officials will now conduct an in-house investigation under EC law, which will run in parallel with the existing inquiry by the Office of Fair Trading. There were signs of a rift between the British government and the European Commission last night over who should investigate the proposed alliance between British Airways and American Airlines. The President of the Board of Trade, Ian Lang, said he was altering the law to enable UK authorities to examine the deal under EC competition rules. The DTI said the move, which does not need to be referred to Parliament, would be made by the end of the week.

It threatens to challenge the European Commission's on-going investigation into the alliance, and other similar tie-ups between European and US carriers, including United Airlines and Lufthansa, and North West and KLM. But Mr Lang said yesterday: "I have concluded that I have a duty to consider the proposed alliance.... SmithKline increased its exposure to consumer brands with the acquisition two years ago of Sterling Winthrop's consumer operations.Investment column, page 18.. These products, which include Seroxat, an anti-depressant drug that saw sales rise 59 per cent, form part of a drive by SmithKline to generate more than a quarter of its sales from products that did not exist five years ago.New products sales reached pounds 370m during the quarter, up 46 per cent at comparable exchange rates. In the first six months these kinds of treatments were worth pounds 702m in sales, a 37 per cent rise on the first half of 1995.Both sales and trading profits from consumer healthcare products also saw a rise, of 22 per cent. The rise in profits was driven, the company said, by sales growth, mainly from new products accounting for almost a third of the pharmaceutical sales. SmithKline Beecham poured cold water yesterday on speculation that it was poised for a major acquisition following the consolidation earlier this year of two types of equity into one share class. The move might have been a prelude to a rights issue funded deal, but Jan Leschly, chief executive, said the company planned to concentrate on organic growth following two large acquisitions in 1994. He was speaking as the drugs and consumer healthcare group announced better than expected second-quarter profits of pounds 342m, up from pounds 300m in the same period last year.

Involving nearly 2,000 patients, the trial combined Epivir with Retrovir and put the two together with other drugs in the same class called "reverse transcriptase inhibitors".The combination of drugs has become an important weapon in the fight against Aids. Results of similar studies were presented to a recent industry conference in Vancouver.Paul Diggle, an analyst at SG Strauss Turnbull, said: "Expectations for Epivir have been gradually rising."He added: "Today's news is reinforcing in people's minds that the Aids market is changing and that Glaxo is in an extremely strong position to be the biggest beneficiary of it.". A similar trial conducted by SmithKline Beecham was abandoned recently after it became evident that its treatment, Coreg, was unexpectedly effective in treating congestive heart failure.The end of the trial does not mean automatic approval for the drug. In SmithKline's case the Food and Drug Administration, the US pharmaceuticals watchdog, asked for further research to prove the drugs efficacy.Glaxo's trial of Epivir started in March 1995 and was scheduled to last for two years, ending next March.