CITY AND SUBURBAN
Noah and Company test the water and have doubts about floating
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
You and I are directors of Noah and Company, a family business dating back to the Flood, which is where it got its start. The board meeting is over, and we ask each other: 'How do you think that went?' Terribly."Yes, and worse every time. I suppose we're right to be bringing the company to the stock market?"Well, it started with Roy Watts, didn't it? He quarrels with that old thug at British Airways, we get him in to run Thames division, he has to sit and watch BA go public, he reckons if they can do it anyone can — if air, why not water? So the idea gets sold to the Chairwoman, and she tells Nicholas, and gives him young Howard to handle it.' What do you make of young Howard?'. 'Oh, outstandingly able, the best of his age-group, everybody says so.' Where did he come from?' The City branch — and before that, doing that revenue reconstruction scheme on the Property side.' He did well?' Left a trail of absolute havoc, old boy, both times, but I suppose it can't have been his fault.' Did he cook up this way of doing it — the exploding share? I mean, we offer shares in the parent company, and these get split up into shares in all the different divisions, and the affiliates are sold separately, but at the same time, all at once — is that right?' I think so, but I'm baffled by it, I expect most people are. Our chap at Schroders would know."Schroders, yes, remind me, what was their last job?' Selling Giro- bank.' How did they manage that?' They haven't.'
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