SKINFLINT'S CITY DIARY
The Directors of London Weekend Television still move in their mystifying way. Not for them the open faced admission of mistake or high handedness, but partiality in allowing Mr Rupert Murdoch to enlarge his holding through a rights issue, following his acquisition of Sir Arnold Weinstock's GEC holding, without it first being offered to ex- isting shareholders. What is one to make of the latest letter to reach the SPECTATOR reading: 'There is available a small package of Ordinary Shares which the Board have agreed should be allocated to those shareholders who were not considered when a previous package of voting shares was available. The price is £1.25 per share'? No explanation comes from Mr John Freeman, or his predecessor, now the President of Lon- don Weekend Television, .Mr Aidan Crawley, as to how many shares in total are available and how the price has been set and whence they came. I like to think that my previous complaints to Lord Bowden in this column on behalf of small shareholders in London Weekend Television have led to this first feint towards pari-passu treatment. May we now ask for quarterly figures or do we have to retain the services of that pro- fessional lifter of corporate skin, young Mr Martin Moir (the 'shareholders' friend') of stockbrokers Tustain and L'estrange, who is In a regular but regrettably one-way cor- respondence with the Companies Section of the Department of Trade and Industry cur- rently concerned the v & o collapse?
Previous page
