In the black
THE NEW Sadler's Wells opens in Octo- ber with the Ballet Rambert, and I hope this will keep Giannandrea Poesio happy. (Later on, Covent Garden's homeless opera company will come and stage The Bartered Bride, which will be more in my line.) Mr Smith and the Arts Council should be happy already, because this will be the first such project supported by the National Lottery to be up and running. There is no hole in the balance sheet at Sadler's Wells, and the profit and loss account (its humble subsidy included) has moved into the black and is planned to stay there. Mr Smith might usefully go on to ask how Sadler's Wells has done it. There are clues here and there in Sir Richard's report. He praises its flexible working arrangements and thinks that its board is the right size and shape. If so, some of the credit should go to Ian Hay Davison, who came in as chairman three years ago and cleared the old board out. He and Ian Albery, the chief executive, have seen the building project through, and one of their first decisions was that a business whose shareholders' funds were in deficit and whose principal asset would soon be a hole in the ground could not go on meeting its payroll. They laid off four-fifths of the staff. Nobody likes to do that, but how Covent Garden must regret missing the chance.
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