The Goldsmith show
SAY what you like, if anything, about Sir James Goldsmith, but he knows how to put on a turn. If he needs to raise more money to bid for BAT, he can, as Stephen Fay suggests, charge for admission to his meet- ings. This week's was supposed to intro- duce his offer document, but Hambros kept it in a cupboard until all was over, so as not to distract our attention. All eyes were on Sir James as he posed the case against BAT — now as the headmaster rebuking careless work, leaning on his pointer or prodding the blackboard (`that chart indicates a death-rattle'), now as the wag at the City lunch-table (`compared to BAT, Alan Bond has got iron self- discipline.), now as a crouching pixie, the Tommy Copper of finance, swept by manic giggles, and emitting sharp cries of 'Gosh' and 'Goody goody gumdrops'. He made hay with BAT, and as for its policy of paying to get out of tobacco, he put it through the threshing machine — all those money-losing shops BAT bought, hun- dreds of them, from Gimbels to Thimbles!
Sir James offers to make BAT a tobacco company again, and then to make it hum. Well, now.... Never mind what his qual- ifications are for running a humming tobac- co company, even with Jacob Rothschild and Kerry Packer to help him, and leave aside — for the moment — the £10.5 billion questions of finance. If Sir James convinces BAT shareholders they would be better off by selling off the businesses BAT bought, why shouldn't they do it themselves, and keep the proceeds, all of them? Perhaps he counts on their sloth, and perhaps he is right.
Previous page
