Underwater swimmers
GO BUST on a bank holiday and no one will notice — it is a time-honoured rule of commerce, followed to this day by directors who surprise their shareholders by calling a meeting at 8 a.m. on Good Friday at Kyle of Lochalsh. Mountleigh, the fun-loving property company, tried the gambit on Monday, but its shareholders can no longer be capable of surprise. They have been the tail-end charlies in a series of deals which worked out for the directors' benefit, they declined last year to throw good money after bad, and with the shares down from 300p to 3p they must have known what was coming. So, with a glug and a gurgle, down to the bottom of the pool goes another underwater swimmer. They were a phe- nomenon of the 1970s, that earlier age of boom and bust for property. Companies whose balance-sheets were obviously underwater, companies with no visible means of support, still somehow swam onwards, up and down the pool, a faint bubble here and there signalling their defi- ance of the laws of nature. Some of them even got out at the other end. Their succes- sors nowadays reflect their creditors' belief that they would be worth even less, dead than alive. Mountleigh's bankers may have been misled by its Spanish business, Gale- rias Preciados. This does not mean precious or pricey galleries — just cheap shops.
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