28 NOVEMBER 1998, Page 32

Subsidence

IT HAS been no pleasure to watch BTR, the house that Owen Green built, falling down. Now it has fallen to a cut-price bid from Siebe, but what a target it would have made for Sir Owen himself in his heyday! After he left, it lost both its way and its point. His notoriously spartan head office became a bureaucracy and some of its inhabitants learned to put their creature comforts first. His most famous victory was BTR's assault on Thomas Tilling — at that time, the biggest takeover bid ever made for a British company. I was at the Tilling shareholders' meeting when an aged investor tottered to her feet to ask what BTR stood for. Up jumped Pat MeaneY, Tilling's managing director: 'Bust Tilling and Run!' The last laugh is with him.