CITY AND SUBURBAN
Housey, housey here come Rupert and Samantha, giving me the feelbad factor
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Isuppose that the Blairs must be trading up. The Halifax Building Society says that Islington house prices have risen by 40 per cent. This is just like the old days when I bought a house there and was told that the neighbourhood was up-and-coming. So it was, in the sense that Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be. Now it is with deepening depression that I hear the Ruperts and Samanthas, in the estate agen- cies and in Conservative Central Office, talking up a housing boom once more. Wel- come back to the feelgood factor, they bur- ble — prices will rise by a third by the end of the century, don't miss the boat ... It was not difficult to see that cheap money and cheap houses would suffice to turn the market round. House prices can go up as well as down. There was a time when peo- ple thought they always would go up and always should, so that we could all get rich by financing our biggest and our least pro- ductive assets with somebody else's money. The ruling party was not content that an Englishman's home would be his castle. It had to be his gold mine, too. It was exempt- ed from the laws of economics. When the price of baked beans went up that was infla- tion, but when the price of houses went up that was prosperity. At the peak of the mar- ket, first-time buyers were having to borrow 90p of each pound that they spent on their houses. The moment the market turned down, they were ruined. They and others learned the hard way what a dangerous illu- sion a housing boom can be, and it seems rather soon to forget. Indeed, in any market, fallen favourites never quite come back, Even today, in Holland, there is no great demand for black tulips. For the moment, when Rupert and Samantha bring you more good news on house prices, try deleting house' and substituting 'baked bean'.
Towery City and . . .
NOTIFICATION of infectious disease: San Gimignano Syndrome, previously reported from Shanghai, has spread to the City of London. The symptom is a high- pitched parrot-cry of 'My tower is taller than your tower'. If you have been in con- tact with expensive architects, or with Guildhall, you should consult your accoun- tant immediately. For the Corporation's sudden urge to build an 800-foot tower on the site of the handsome old Baltic
Exchange there can be no rational explana- tion. It is just that the City Fathers want to upstage Docklands and its 650-foot tower on Canary Wharf, complete with pointy hat. That building is now reduced to hous- ing half a dozen newspapers stacked one above another, like a down-river Fleet Street without even the relief of insobriety. Why should a taller City tower do any bet- ter? Si monumentos requiris, circumspice.
branchy between towers
THE TALLEST tower in the City's skyline belongs to the National Westminster Bank, which has no use for it at all and dimly hopes to let it out. Then comes Britannic House, built as a swagger head office for British Petroleum, which has moved back across the road into its previous head office, by Lutyens. The Stock Exchange has found tenants for its tower. Barclays has not been so lucky —that bulbous bulge on the top of its new head office still stands empty. As for Lloyd's, pending my proposed removal of its tower to the Crystal Palace site at Syden- ham, where it will be re-erected sideways on, I need only say that there is no building in the City worse adapted to the business that was supposed to be carried on inside it. City people do not want to be marooned in towers. They want to get out and see each other. That is how the place works, and if the City Fathers are too feverish to under- stand it, they should lie down until the San Gimignano Syndrome goes away.
Lloyd's unsung heroes
NOW THAT Lloyd's of London has voted to survive, honours will be heaped upon its chairman, David Rowland — a gold medal and a knighthood ought to be the least of it — so I now propose to found a new order of chivalry for Lloyd's unsung heroes. This will be the Order of the Blown Whistle. It will go to those who, over many years, embarrassed the Lloyd's establishment with inconvenient facts, My first award goes to Malcolm Pearson, the Lloyd's broker who detected a fraudulent claim. A shipload of Fiat cars, supposedly destroyed by fire at sea, were scuttling along the Naples dock- side, slightly singed,. Another broker got the claim settled and Lloyd's ruling committee censured — guess who? Naturally, Mr Pearson. Ian Hay Davison was the reform- ing chief executive who was set to clear out Lloyd's rotten apples, and soon found something wrong with the barrel. How the old guard hated that, and him.
OBWs all round
THE pugnacious John Rew founded Chat- set, which first gave Lloyd's members inde- pendent figures on how they were and should be doing. The establishment fumed — these figures would only muddle people and, what was worse, they turned out to be right when Lloyd's figures were wrong. Antony Haynes was a director of Bookers, the grocery group, when in his spare time he chaired the Aisociation of Lloyd's Mem- bers. He commissioned the McKinsey study which was the basis of Lloyd's long-overdue business plan. There will be mentions in dispatches for Charles Roxburgh, the brains behind the scenes at McKinsey, and for Rosalind Gilmore, the regulator who resigned rather than put up with Lloyd's way of doing things. Lastly I must honour Michael Deeny, the rock and roll impre- sario who rallied the stricken members of the Gooda Walker syndicates. When Lloyd's called its first offer final — which, in the City, should mean what it says — Mr Deeny pooh-poohed it. It was as final, he said, as an opening bid at Galway horse fair. I shall take care not to play poker against him, but he has earned his OBW.
Continuation
ROTHSCHILD continuation: Disraeli believed in it. His letter to • Leopold de Rothschild, congratulating him on his engagement to be married, has a place of honour in the family banking house at New Court. 'Besides, my dear Leo,' Dizzy con- cludes, 'I have always been of opinion, that there cannot be too many Rothschilds.'
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