Maxwell's house
ROBERT Maxwell buys shares in the way other people take pot shots at clay pigeons: whirr, bang, tinkle. He will have enjoyed the marksmanship that brought down five per cent of Newspaper Publishing. This is the company formed to bring out the Independent, this autumn, as a new serious national daily paper. Mr Maxwell at the Mirror group relishes the role of Fleet Street proprietor, but the Independent was never supposed to have that sort of prop- rietor, which is one reason why so many Fleet Street journalists have flocked to join it. They have a share of the action, but the paper's £20 million of backing was to come from a wide spread of City institutions, none of which would dominate. One of them, though, a fund management com- pany, has a young manager related by marriage to the Maxwell family: his sister married one of the sons who have followed Mr Maxwell into the business. . . . City family-watchers will have to lift their eyes from the endless alliances of the financial Smiths (and Smith-Dorriens and Dorrien- Smiths and Martin Smiths and Carringtons and Pauncefotes, who changed their names from Smith before they could see how the land lay) and begin to observe a new dynasty, using its family alliances in the classic manner. Look out for a Maxwell- Smith.
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