Tony Hayward, the chief executive officer of BP has seen a pay rise of 41 per cent in 2009 even as the company saw a 50 per cent drop in net profits in the year.

The annual report of the company which was published yesterday showed that Mr. Hayward earned a total of £4.01m in the year compared to £2.85m in 2008.

Bus and train operator Arriva has announced that its pre-tax profits slipped 19 per cent to settle at £121.7 million in 2009.

Revenue at CrossCountry train franchise grew just 2.6 per cent, below an estimated growth of 10 per cent when it bid for the franchise.

However, the company is confident about its future. It expects passenger revenue to grow at its CrossCountry train franchise. It also expects its fuel bill to come down by £30 million in 2010.

Bookmaker Paddy Power announced on Tuesday that its profits for 2009 tumbled year-on-year 15 per cent to 67.2 million euros.

Paddy Power described the past year as ‘cracking year for punters’ as its punters enjoyed a series of winning results.

Paddy Power suffered as punters won, particularly with bets placed on Ireland's Six Nations rugby grand slam and horse racing.

Defence and aerospace equipments producer Meggitt reported a drop of 4 per cent in pretax profit for the full year to December 31 as sales to civil customers fell due to economic downturn.

Company’s underlying pre-tax profit plunged from £243.3 million in 2008 to settle at £234.2 million, while sales tumbled year-on-year 1 per cent to £1.15 billion. On underlying basis, earnings per share dropped 5 per cent to 25.3 pence.

The chairman of HSBC, Stephen Green, has defended bank's move of paying millions of pounds in bonuses as the British lender posted a fall of 24 per cent in pre-tax profit to $7.1 billion.

Stephen Green argued that that the bank's decision of bonus pay-out was right as its management-team was under-paid.

Stuart Gulliver, bank's investment banking chief, received 9.3 million pounds, while chief of global markets Samir Asaf has been awarded with a bonus of around 9 million pounds.

Shares in Pearson on Monday gained 44 pence to close at 956 pence-a-share as the British publisher reported better-than-expected headline pretax profits for 2009.

The London-based Pearson saw an increase of 13 per cent headline pretax profits to £761 million, up from market forecasts of £741 million.

Engineering group Tomkins plc has reported a pre-tax profit of $38.4 million for 2009 as compared with a loss of $8.1 million in the pervious year, sending shares up.

Shares in Tomkins surged 4.4 per cent to 201 pence-a-share on Monday in London.

However, company's sales were reported at $4.18 billion, representing a year-on-year decline of 24.2 per cent.

Net finance costs declined from $75.0 million to settle at $46.3 million from year earlier period.