CITY AND SUBURBAN
Do you get taken to court often?
Not since you sued me last
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
jIhave never been manipulated by the Princess of Wales but I hope that if I were I should behave like a gentleman. To others the experience seems to have come as a Shock, unless, as I dare say, they have been acting out a fantasy. I am less easily Shocked. Even the notion that the spirited publicist Brian Basham might seek to influ- ence me on Lord King's behalf was one that I could face with equanimity. He is in the business, after all. Now that British Air- ways has subjected him to the usual fate of messengers and shot him, I urge him to join !orces with the Princess, under the slogan For King and country'. I am not worried about people who want to get things into the papers. The people who want to keep things out worry me. They already have a well-stocked armoury — though, from the Current debate on this subject, you might not think so — and are now looking for- ward to reinforcements. The law of libel is their trustiest weapon. (Robert Maxwell, Master of the gagging writ, was reckoned to Initiate 10 per cent of all actions and threats of action.) Those who write about the world of business and finance must r,emember that it is even more expensive to ',he' companies than to libel individuals. wlY mentor Sir Patrick Sergeant let his aper in for a fortune by saying that a potty 'Me , Company in the rubber business had !ne Fraud Squad in. So it did, but the court 'mind that to say so constituted innuendo. I , ee found myself sitting next to Lord ancroft, who asked me in his breezy way if I was often sued for libel. 'Not recently,' I was able to tell him — 'in fact, the last per- sy.n to do so was you.' (He and six other eLlrectors of Cunard. We sorted it out. He "ad of
The spoon-fed solution
HE BEST insurance policy against libel is enmentary evidence, but that presents ifegal hazards of its own. A friend of mine r°und and published an accountant's ;eP°11, showing that Lord Brayley, a minis- h'er in Harold Wilson's government, had .tei Ped himself to £225,000 out of a compa- 14.1IIYe °f which he had been chairman. In came writ -- for breach of copyright. mbarrassing documents are, by their LiaLt.ure, not meant to be seen or published, 7mch gives any amount of scope for legal ingermitY. If that fails, the lawyers can
always try claiming that publication was or would be in contempt of court. I am told from time to time that something is sub judice. This is normally a try-on, and a whiskery try-on at that, but if I get it wrong some judge will be asked to put me in the cooler. Laws about privacy and intrusion might, I suppose, get me there quicker. Would they have stopped little Miss Wright telling the world about Sir Ralph Halpern's knightly prowess? Would a director's per- sonal finances be private — his contract of employment, his golden handcuffs and handshakes and parachutes? I do not really look forward to finding out. The sure way to stay out of trouble is to lie back and be spoon-fed by publicists, but I try to avoid it.
The economy, stupid . . .
I HOPE that among the cast of thousands conjured up this week by President Clinton to hail his accession, room was found for the the dapper form of Alan Greenspan. He can have the place reserved for the senior porter of University College, Oxford, who has grumpily chosen to stay at home. The Republicans think that Mr Greenspan won the election, or, as they would say, lost it. To their minds he is the chairman of the Federal Reserve who put the economy to the death of a thousand cuts. He had got as far as the first two dozen cuts in interest rates by polling day. That is how central bankers like to play it. They deal out cheap- er money like matrons dealing out sweets — now, children, one at a time, that's enough, everyone behave or there won't be any more . . This parsimonious approach was not much help to a governing party on the defensive — not when the Clinton cam- paigners had a notice in their office, to remind themselves how they were planning to win the election: THE ECONOMY, STUPID. The plan worked, their man won, and all of a sudden the recovery seemed to have started. Mr Greenspan could not have timed it better. He had been concerned, as a central banker should be, to nurse his country's banking system back to health, and for that, peace and quiet were essen- tial. What the banks needed was to borrow money cheaply and to lend it at a profit to the only good big borrower around, the US government. Citicorp, the biggest of them, has swung round from heavy loss into prof- it, and John Reed, its survivalist chairman, blandly puts it down to his two years of rebuilding.
. . . the banks, beaten
NO SUCH luck here. The Treasury is des- perate for money and is ready to borrow from anybody in the world, except the British banks. It has been mindlessly fol- lowing a rule of thumb laid down by Nigel Lawson. Now there are belated signs of sec- ond (or in so me cases first) thoughts. The Governor of the Bank of England contrived not to giggle this week, asserting that the UK banking industry was well-placed to meet its customers' demands in a recovery. If the TSB had not just provided another £600 million for bad debts, and if the Big Four were not bracing themselves for another round of big hits, they would, no doubt, be even better placed. I would have said that our banks and financial businesses had taken a beating and were now about as full of bounce as a wet muffin. The banks' capacity to back their customers will, said the Governor solemnly, increase as prof- itability returns. In other words, if they were given the chance to make some money, they might lend some. Mr Greenspan got there first.
Or else
THE Franc Fort is taking its toll on the French economy — a high price to pay for a currency that has to keep up with the Germans. When the International Mone- tary Fund invented an artificial asset for countries to hold in their reserves, the scep- tical French said that it would need a name. Any ideas? Well, they said, the name should suggest the lasting qualities of gold. The IMF heard it, thought about it, and chose 'Special Drawing Right' instead, but now is the time to revive it. For Franc Fort read Or Dur.
Previous page
