1.   But defense sector companies and the entertainment industry did react with a sense of urgency.

2.   Merrill Lynch expects oil sector companies to report earnings for the quarter ending in June at or slightly better than consensus expectations.

3.   The new rules might lead some firms to list, with likely candidates being service sector companies with struggling parents.

4.   Australian Unity, a finance sector company which commissioned the surveys, plans to conduct two a year to construct an index of national well-being.

5.   The system, formulated by the ISO in Geneva, Switzerland, has been adopted by manufacturers and service sector companies around the globe.

6.   In the technology sector companies linked to the Internet were the big losers, led by Netscape, which reported a decline in quarterly earnings from the previous quarter.

7.   Kumarmanagalam said one of his demands was that the government should put the money gained from disinvesting in sector companies back into rebuilding the mammoth state-run sector.

8.   Most of its projects so far have been with state sector companies in joint ventures with foreign firms as the Vietnamese private sector is underdeveloped.