The uncertainty over whether the London Grand Prix will be held, as usual, at Crystal Palace or moved to Gateshead, has done nothing to lessen the councillors' concerns.. If this plan goes through it is going to force athletes to go abroad or force them out of track and field altogether."Bromley Council, which is due to take over the full running of Crystal Palace from the Sports Council next year, has been concerned over the commercial viability of athletics on the site. If the euro were to turn out to be a weak currency, expect all bonds denominated in that currency to plunge.So if the two straightforward explanations have problems, is there a better one around? I think there is and it runs like this.I think the markets are in something of a state of shock - not a shock in the sense that the oil price has soared, or share prices are plunging or the ERM is breaking up, but in something deeper. Maybe people pile into sterling on a very short-term view of the currency, while they shun gilts because they are worried about the medium-term outlook. On paper the borrowing figures for this coming year look fine, but that is just on paper.Ask market traders and this is the sort of answer they give, so I suppose there must be something in it.

If anything they are over-rating the pound, and while one can justify present levels, any further rise (which may well take place in the next few months) will push it into overshoot territory. True, we didn't do as badly as they did in 1994/5, but we ought to be back to the sort of relationship that applied in early 1994, and we are not. So there is a puzzle. The interest rate on gilts is pretty much the same as that on Italian government bonds, despite the fact that debt as a proportion of GDP is half the Italian level, and both inflation and the fiscal deficit are lower. As far as British industry is concerned the modest decline on the pound over the past few days is a relief, for exports were in danger of becoming seriously unprofitable. Nevertheless, the pound does remain sharply up on the level of a year ago, not just against the dollar but more notably against the main continental currencies.

George Soros, the legendary speculator whose activities helped nudge sterling out of the ERM, is back on the bear tack, at least as far as the pound is concerned. One of the core debates was performance measurement, and those areas which really drive the creation of shareholder value.Paul Sheehan, the fund manager in charge of the fund at Kleinwort's, says the financial figures are not overlooked "Quite the reverse," he says. EVA is a universal metric that everybody can use, so that people from the shopfloor all the way to the top can enforce its principles."Stern Stewart is very keen to promote the long-term reliability of EVA, and its sister, Market Value Added - another Stern Stewart measure, of the difference between a company's market value, and the total capital invested - in guiding and helping to set future strategy. GrandMet, the food and drinks giant, in its latest move, has set a target for return on capital."All well and good, but return on capital is a one-dimensional measure, and on its own is not enough," says Mr Bittlestone.

EVA - acronyms sprout rapidly in these waters - measures the difference between a company's after-tax operating profit, and the cost of the capital invested in the business. The measures need not be purely financial.Meanwhile, companies are trying to find ways of spreading the concept of shareholder value throughout their organisations. The National Audit Office is working on a major exercise with government departments to figure out requirements for a new annual review of Output and Performance Analysis. As a term, it has always been slightly nebulous, but total shareholder return is the base line: capital gains plus dividends.It is of course true that shares go up and down on the back of market cycles, but the broad aim of increasing share prices within those cycles is generally accepted.How should a company work to maximise the return to shareholders? Individual companies can measure performance in their own ways.