Sweet and sour
I recommend the directors of Rowntree to buy themselves top hats and start making a market in Government stock. They will then find that the rules have changed, in their favour. The demonstration came this week when the two big Japanese securities firms, Nomura and Daiwa, were told at the last minute that they could not, after all, join the Bank of England's approved list of market-makers. This had nothing to do with the merits of the firms or the state of the market. It was tit for tat. British firms, in particular Barclays de Zoete Wedd and James Capel, are still being held up outside the Tokyo markets. The abrupt change of mind fell short of the Bank's normal level of subtlety, and evidently came from the other end of town. There, reciprocality is once again shown to be the test for the cross-border ambitions of financial com- panies — you can't do in our market what we wouldn't be free to do in yours. I do not envy the minister who has to try to explain why there should be one law for the financier and another for the confectioner. His answer limps to its halt, a dozen barrackers jump up to say, 'Arising out of that reply . . .' and he finds himself trying to explain the difference between foreign share stakes in chocolate companies and foreign share stakes in oil companies. The candid answer would be that no govern- ment can be seen taking risks with the Britishness of British Petroleum — so the Monopolies and Mergers Commission has been asked to say whether the Kuwait Investment Office's stake is against the national interest. That is a broad and large sort of question to ask anybody, and is likely to generate a broad and large answer, or for that matter a silly answer. It becomes more evident day by day that the Commission needs a frame of reference specific tests (as I was arguing last week) of the public interest, of which competition would be the first one, but not the only one.
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