Not amused
PUTTING the Union Discount Company of London into play? Whatever next? It is like making an indelicate advance to Queen Victoria. I was brooding here last week on the dangerous game of putting companies into play — collecting a share stake which could make the company available to a new owner — and brooding, too, on the Australasian raiders, some of
whom seemed to have unlimited funds while others only had unlimited cheek. Now here is Sir Ron Brierley, the mus- tachioed financier and sometime deputy chairman of the Bank of New Zealand, popping up with almost a quarter of Union's shares. He has bought out the Kuwait Investment Office's stake to add to his own holding, which he is said to have bought after driving down Cornhill and asking what went on behind Union's fin de siècle facade. It was a good question. Union is a discount house, for years the biggest, and nowadays the most profitable — one of the small group of specialised wholesale banks dealing day by day with the Bank of England, which uses these dealings as its levers to move interest rates and the money market. The discount houses used to be a protected species, and even now I cannot think that the Bank would be happy to see them turned into counters on a gaming table. So what is Sir Ron's game? He has been selling other share stakes, does he want to buy further into Union — or does he hope that the newly enlarged stake is more saleable? That seems more likely, given that he put his initial stake together at well over the present price. No one can control more than 15 per cent of a bank unless approved by the Bank of England as a fit and proper person. Sir Ron is fit and proper, that is established, but what about the potential buyers of his stake? Mr Breakup-Artist, M. Arbitrageur, Mr Sheepshearer? They would be in the position of those who buy land in the hope of getting planning per- mission — and an awkward position that can be. Ask Blue Arrow. Meanwhile the Union and I are not amused.
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