The market was braced for poor figures after two profits warnings since the turn of the year and yesterday's plans appeared to build on the rationalisation begun by Mr Jervis.Pippa Wicks, finance director, said the group was "acting a lot more decisively and a lot more speedily" than before.The core businesses are to be grouped around four divisions where the group has strong positions, covering lace and stretch fabric, lingerie and hosiery, casual wear and underwear and furnishings.The 12 businesses to go, earmarked a year ago, represent pounds 160m of sales and no profits with some of them not being profitable for several years. Courtaulds Textiles yesterday announced a radical restructuring plan to arrest the decline in the Gossard bras to bed linen group which saw it sink into the red in the first six months of the year. Colin Dyer, who took over as chief executive after the ousting of Noel Jervis in June, said the group would take a charge of pounds 30m-pounds 35m over the next couple of years as it exited from about a dozen businesses that were underperforming or did not have the scope to become leading players in international markets. The programme would be self-financing and deliver savings of between pounds 10m and pounds 13m by 1998, he said.The group also renewed its warning that jobs would be lost as it stepped up plans to move more of the group's clothing manufacturing operations overseas. "It's not difficult to make good money from packaging but there is a lot to do."The news came as Rexam reported pre-tax profits in the six months to June of pounds 77m, down from pounds 112m a year ago, and warned that it was cautious about the outlook for the second half of the year despite a better July and August than the corresponding period in 1995.Jeremy Lancaster, the new chairman, blamed "generally flat" industrial demand, particularly in the UK and Continental Europe.Rexam has been out of favour with investors since it issued two warnings in three months last year as profits were hit by volatile raw material costs and customer de-stocking.In July Rexam was ejected from the FT-SE 100 index.. "We need a flatter organisation to implement changes and increase our focus," he said. Disposals in five of Rexam's seven sectors were expected in the next 12-18 months, he added, noting that businesses with annual turnover of pounds 200m had already been sold.Analysts reckoned the disposals are likely to see Rexam concentrating on its core packaging activities at the expense of peripheral operations such as building and engineering."Whole divisions could be sold off," said Francesca Raleigh at brokers Panmure Gordon. The shares rose 14p to 408.5p after Rolf Borjesson, the Swedish chief executive who replaced David Lyon in July, announced a programme of disposals aimed at businesses with sales of up to pounds 300m a year. Plans to revive the flagging fortunes of Rexam, the paper and packaging group formerly known as Bowater and under new management, received a warm welcome in the City yesterday, even though profits continued to shrink in the first half.

Whether Mr Francesconi had since retracted that statement was unclear for much of yesterday, but the deputy editor of Milano Finanza, Franaco Bechis, stated that he confirmed "the contents of the original article letter by letter, comma by comma, tone by tone."Later in the day, Mr Francesconi explained that "what I was denying was not the substance, but the form of that article".He confirmed his criticisms of the half-year report.. There were reports Consob, the market regulator, had asked the group by today to elaborate on seven points on the half-year results.Doubts that pre-tax losses of L440.2bn last week told the whole story, took centre stage once again yesterday when the company's former director- general, Renzo Francesconi, wrote a letter to the Milano Finanza financial daily apparently denying having called the figures into question.Mr Francesconi resigned from the Oliveti board last week after telling Milano Finanza that "the situation is much more serious, especially from the financial and economic point of view"."There can be no negotiation on numbers and cash flow," he told the daily. Olivetti's stock fell by 7.18 per cent to L560 in Milan yesterday, following the 20 per cent on Monday when some L530bn was wiped from the total market value. The Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, has also become involved in the affair. He yesterday met Carlo de Benedetti, who resigned as chairman of the company last week, to ask the financier to brief him on the situation at the company.Mr Caio's round of talks begins this afternoon with a meeting with the industry minister, Pierluigi Bersani, who will want to know whether the rumours that the group plans to play off 5,000 employees are founded.Mr Caio will tomorrow appear before the Senate industry committee, and on Monday and Tuesday he faces his toughest test in meetings with investors.In Milan, then in London, he will be called on by investors to explain question marks hanging over Olivetti's half-year figures released last week.The affair continues to unsettle investors. Any job lost is painful enough, but when the wider picture is taken into account, the export of textile jobs to third world nations is not a hugely significant phenomenon.. Francesco Caio, Olivetti's managing director, will be grilled over the next week at meetings with Italian authorities and investors keen to know the true state of the struggling computer maker's finances.

Why on earth should a prosperous developed country want to hang on to the kind of jobs that pay starvation wages? Do we really want to be the sweatshop of the world, competing with India and China for mechanical and boring work like weaving commodity textiles - or even data-processing for that matter. Better by far is the new generation of jobs in sophisticated and capital-intensive factories making reasonably hi-tech goods But there is a further point here. Manufacturing, which continues to bear the brunt of any job losses in Britain, is now a comparitively small part of the British economy, accounting for less than a quarter of total output. Greater inequality means the poorest are worse off but there is no general immiserisation of the workforce taking place.For another thing, the jobs being created in the UK by foreign investors - even some "third world" investors from Taiwan and Indonesia - are better than the ones being created in low-cost countries by British firms. Female full-time employment has increased about as much as part-time employment Average earnings have climbed steadily in real terms.