CITY AND SUBURBAN
A golden statue for making the BATmen get off their assets
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Victoria Street is not such a townscape as would be utterly spoiled by a statue of Sir James Goldsmith. Gavin Stamp and the Prince of Wales might let it pass. Grinning and gesticulating, large as life, the Gold- smith statue should stand in front of BAT's head office, preferably in the line of sight from chairman Patrick Sheehy's window. BAT's shareholders can afford to commis- sion it, and indeed to cast it, appropriately, In gold — and for that they can thank Sir James. His bid for BAT, the biggest takeover bid (by a multiple of three) ever seen in British markets, now finds itself labelled an ignominious failure, so that the question it is said to prompt is why anybody took it seriously in the first place. The answer is evident. Mr Sheehy took it seriously because his job was, as it still must be, on the line. The core of Sir James's argument was that BAT under Mr Sheehy had wasted its tobacco business on riotous acquisitions, that the shareholders would have been far better off if BAT had stuck to tobacco and paid out its earnings, and that they would still be better off if BAT were now to sell off its ornamental encrustations for what they would fetch. At first outraged, then resistant, Mr Sheehy turned through 180 degrees with the agility of a prop forward on a glue-pot pitch and ordered his own clearance sale. It has gone well — well enough, by now, to leave no great margin of value for a bidder. Sir James has dropped out and the auction Is over. BAT's shareholders, the benefi- ciaries of all this, need to ask themselves why it took Sir James to give them what they so demonstrably wanted. Whose com- pany is it, anyway? Sir James a year ago carried a great City debate (staged in the Oak Room of the Bank of England) on the merits of takeovers — maintaining that nothing else would make companies' cosily ensconced managements get off their assets. BAT bears him out.
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