Cosa nostra
HASTILY posted posters now invite you to guess which retailer sells one out of every five television sets we buy. No prize is offered for guessing Dixons (well, it wouldn't be Boots, or Sainsburys, would it?) and no clue is given to the more interesting question — why Dixons should bother to ask you. The answer is that Dixons is fighting for its life. It is on the receiving end of a £570 million takeover bid from Kingfisher (ne Woolworth), now busily running down Dixons' management and picking holes in its accounts. You would not know this from the posters, but then Dixons is not allowed to tell you. No more can it try to rebut the attacks or take pot-shots at Kingfisher. The Takeover Panel has banned 'controversial' advertise- ments during a bid, taking the view that they create a bad impression of the City, as a tough, combative sort of place where they fight their own and their clients' corners. So Dixons and BATs and other companies in the firing line have to think of something uncontroversial to say, which still might make you feel better about them. It is the predictably silly consequ- ence of the Panel's self-defeating rule. The impression the Panel creates is of a City where all can be settled behind the scenes — a word to the wise, a deal with the institutional shareholders, a quick throat- cutting at the right price — so long as people outside are not upset by the noise of, battle. All this, the City implies, is our own business: cosa nostra. For myself, consider- ing the fees that the City firms charge, I should be shocked if they did not fight.
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