Top business and finance figures were well represented in the Queen's New Year Honours List for 2003, with industry, finance and services sharing the limelight.

Knighthoods have gone to three in the business world and about one in five of the names on the lengthy honours list was from business, science and technology.

Knighthood for Paul Myners after his pensions report

And the new custom of keeping life peerages off the main Honours list continued too, since - as the prime minister's spokesman explained - going to the House of Lords is now more of an appointment than an honour.

Last bow

Among the new knights on the 2003 list is Peter Burt, executive deputy chairman of HBOS, whose award for services to banking comes just six days before he retires aged 58.

Among his more public-spirited innovations was the setting up of bank accounts for homeless vendors of the Big Issue magazine in Glasgow, who would normally find it impossible to bank their earnings without a fixed address.

Having studied business in the US and worked for computer company Hewlett-Packard, Mr Burt returned to Edinburgh to run a software company and then join a merchant bank before rising through the ranks of the Bank of Scotland.

"This honour is a reflection of the importance of the role that Bank of Scotland has played, not only in the financial world but also in the wider community," Mr Burt said.

Rolls-Royce boss John Rose was honoured

Also in finance, a CBE went to Paul Myners, whose review of life insurance and pension funds was adopted by the Government in 2001.

The Myners Report said holders of pensions were being short-changed by fund managers, whose timidity was cutting into returns.

Icon

In industry, the chief executive of aero-engine maker Rolls-Royce, John Rose, was made a knight.

Rolls-Royce has suffered like the rest of the UK industrial sector from unfavourable exchange rates and the drastic decline of the commercial aviation business in the past couple of years.

But it remained profitable in 2002, and reported that despite current problems its order book was bulging for the years ahead.

Also from British industry, John Houliston, the chief executive of Dairy Crest, was awarded a CBE.

And Scottish union leader David Falconer was honoured with an MBE.

As leader of GMB Scotland, Mr Falconer led the campaign to win a minimum wage of �5.18 an hour for Scottish public sector workers.

"He is a lovely man, a man of great courage, a dedicated trade unionist and a very good friend," said John Edmonds, the general secretary of the GMB.

Europe

In another award after long service, Pauline Green, chief executive of the Co-operative Union and a former Member of the European Parliament, was made a Dame.

Ms Green has returned to the Co-op movement

Ms Green returned in 2000 from 11 years in Brussels to lead the Co-operative Union, the umbrella body for a wide range of British worker-owned businesses from retailers to banks.

There were other business-related knighthoods for the head of the Competition Commission, Derek Morris, former Lord Mayor of London James Oliver, and ex-editor of the Times newspaper Peter Stothard.

And among the other people honoured - with an OBE - were Hywel Gwyn Jones, former senior partner at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and Leonard Boulton, operations director at Remploy, the company that employs mostly disabled workers.