The £100 million-a-year contract is conditional on PowerGen agreeing a parallel deal with British Coal.

The company, Correctional Medical Services of St. Louis, took over health care services at the state's 12 prisons in April, under a $62 million-a-year contract.

Having all but guided Ireland to Poland and Ukraine, Italian Trapattoni is expected to discuss an extension to his £1.5 million-a-year contract which is due to expire in April.

However, a year ago, when the Mets signed Bobby Bonilla to a then-record $5.8 million-a-year contract, Jacobs told then-Commissioner Fay Vincent that he should have fined them.

He said about 280,000 municipal employees now receive some form of health or hospital insurance under the city's $224 million-a-year contract with Blue Cross.

A partnership of the State University at Stony Brook and the Battelle Memorial Institute of Columbus, Ohio, are among the bidders for the $388 million-a-year contract.

Group 4 Remand Services Ltd, the security firm selected by the Home Office to manage The Wolds in a £5 million-a-year contract, likes to think of its prisoners as customers.

Bonilla's $5.8 million-a-year contract with the Mets will command Fielder's attention as he and his representatives plot their arbitration strategy.

The Sandberg deal eclipsed the $5.8 million-a-year contract Bobby Bonilla signed as a free agent with the Mets a year ago.

Last month the department extended the bidding deadline two weeks, after a last-minute withdrawal by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a partner in one of the two bids received for the $400 million-a-year contract.