“Over the years, BA has threatened to cut its fares to compete with low-cost airlines several times, but low fares are not sustainable without a low-cost base,” she added.Despite the criticisms, Martin George, BA’s commercial director, insisted: “This is not a short-term gimmick but a long-term commitment to our millions of customers to offer irresistible low fares every day of the year.” He said BA would offer seven million seats a year – about a fifth of the total on its short-haul network – at the reduced price, with one million of those fares being priced at the lowest rate. A spokeswoman said the BA offer amounted to little more than a gimmick. The airline challenged BA to say what its average fare would now be following the initiative, saying easyJet’s was £42 one-way. Michael Cawley, deputy chief executive of the Irish carrier, said: “Ryanair’s fares are still only a fraction of BA’s even with their so-called fare shake-up.”EasyJet claimed that return fares on BA would in many cases be no cheaper than before because the airline previously charged passengers extra for flying one-way.

BA said that as part of a “radical shake-up” of its short-haul network, fares to more than 65 domestic and European destinations would be cut by up to 50 per cent, with the price of one-way tickets starting at £29.
But Ryanair, Europe’s largest budget carrier, urged BA to be “more honest and transparent” with its pricing. British Airways’ no-frills rivals yesterday dismissed the airline’s attempt to launch a fares war on European routes as a “gimmick and a scam”, saying BA could never compete on price until it was genuinely low-cost. He also described Lord Browne’s £10m remuneration last year as “obscene”.Zac Brown, a proxy shareholder who had flown in from the US for the meeting, said that while BP had made progress on its approach to the environment, “we continue to have concerns about the safety record in the US”.Peter Sutherland, BP’s chairman responded: “We do not accept the broad-brush and excessive criticisms that have been reported in some media .. We don’t accept that this company has an endemic problem.”. Lord Browne of Madingley, BP’s chief executive, admitted to the gathering that 2005 had been a year of “mixed fortunes” despite record financial performance.
“In some respects it was a very difficult year,” he said, pointing in particular to an explosion at the energy giant’s refinery in Texas, which killed 15 people.Mike Porter, one shareholder, said that the Texas accident and an oil spill in Alaska “point to serious management failures and an inability to assess risk”. Shareholders at BP’s annual general meeting yesterday took the company to task over its environmental and safety record and the pay packages enjoyed by top management.

The group, which is still fighting a £6.7m fine handed down by the Office of Fair Trading for colluding over the price of replica kit, increased its provision for the fine by £1.9m to £3.9m It takes its fight to the Court of Appeal next month.. A decision to slash prices to protect its dwindling share of the sportswear market meant gross margins across its stores fell sharply in the second half of the year compared with the first six months.Tom Knight, the chief executive, warned the retail business would continue to make lower margins for the foreseeable future. Sportsworld [its biggest competitor] emerged seemingly from nowhere and we should have taken them more seriously than we did in their early days.” Sportsworld, owned by Mike Ashley, recently overtook JJB as the UK’s biggest sportswear retailer by turnover.Pre-tax profits at JJB in the year to 29 January were £33.7m, down from £62.5m the previous year on revenue down 4 per cent at £745.2m Underlying sales fell 4.3 per cent. Perennial bid speculation supports the stock.
Roger Lane-Smith, the chairman, said: “JJB made a familiar mistake of thinking its position was unassailable.

Shares in JJB slumped 5p to 176.5p despite the group’s decision to hold the dividend. The sports retailer, which also owns fitness clubs, sought to draw a line under years of pain for investors, insisting it had turned the corner But it acknowledged its days of sky-high margins were over. JJB Sports admitted it had failed to take its main rival Sportsworld seriously enough as it revealed a near halving of profits last year and warned there was no end in sight to the price war that has hammered its margins. “If this is a friendly approach, then the Spanish have got a funny way of proceeding with it,” one source in the BAA camp said.. Despite this, BAA only got sight of the full offer document late yesterday evening, giving it little time to respond.

Last night Marcus Agius, the BAA chairman, responded to the offer document by saying: “The Ferrovial consortium’s offer cannot be taken seriously. It is not more than a tactical manoeuvre and our shareholders should have nothing to do with it.” BAA said it intended to write to shareholders within the next 14 days giving its detailed reasons for rejecting the offer.Ferrovial continues to insist that its offer is “unilateral” rather than hostile and that it remains keen to secure the support of the BAA board. Its current estimate is that debt will peak at £8bn in 2012-13.Ferrovial has sought to reassure the regulator that the highly leveraged nature of its offer will not put any of BAA’s investment plans at risk or the Government’s desire to see a second runway at Stansted and, ultimately, a third one and a sixth terminal at Heathrow.But BAA is certain to use the debt issue as one of its main cards in resisting what it has described as a hostile approach which does not begin to reflect the true value of the company. In addition, BAA is planning to invest £1bn to £1.5bn to upgrade the central terminal area at Heathrow and a further £1.7bn on the first phase of the second runway at Stansted. Ferrovial will provide 64 per cent of the equity element, the Canadians 26 per cent and the Singaporeans the remaining 10 per cent.The airports regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, and the Secretary of State for Transport, Alistair Darling, have already raised concerns about BAA’s balance sheet being over-leveraged because of the very heavy capital investment programme it is facing to upgrade facilities at its London airports.BAA’s debt-to-equity gearing currently stands at 61 per cent but it will rise to more than 100 per cent once the £4.2bn construction of Heathrow’s Terminal Five is complete in 2008.