Beauty, brains and banks
SHAW, pressing his advances on Mrs Patrick Campbell, urged her to imagine a child with her beauty and his brains. Mrs Campbell backed away: 'But supposing, Shaw, it had your beauty and my brains?' A similar fear overcame an eminent Hong Kong banker, looking at Lloyds' bid for Standard Chartered. In Hong Kong, Stan- dard Chartered is of the highest standing (its notes are legal tender), but as much cannot be said of Lloyds, which has had to retreat from a costly experience, including fraud both on and in the bank. take it,' said the mandarin, 'that the idea is to combine Lloyds' strength at home with Standard Chartered's strength abroad. But what if they combine Standard Chartered's weakness at home with Lloyds' weakness abroad?' It is no advertisement for Lloyds abroad that its attempt to get the bid cleared by the American authorities was left so late. If Lloyds had woken up to the need when it first made its approach to Standard Chartered, we should have had the answer by now. In the event, Lloyds' bid was set to run out of time under the City rules of the Takeover Panel. Lloyds has persuaded the Panel that the rules should, if time runs out, be bent. That is a suicidal concession on the Panel's part. If Lloyds, with all its resources and financial sophistication, can be excused, how can the rules bind lesser companies? As for Standard Chartered's shareholders, they should take their line from Mrs Pat.
Previous page
