Tora, tora, tora J im Slater must be reflecting ruefully on
Lord Weinstock's great stock market coup. The same gambit landed him in court. Mr Slater had fallen foul of the Companies Acts, which forbade a com- pany to finance the purchase of its own shares. Unscrupulous companies, so the drafters feared, would buy up all their shares and disappear in a puff of smoke, much to the mortification of their credi- tors. This always seemed an unlikely trick, and one never seen in the United States, where companies can and do happily buy their own shares. So company law was changed, and the General Electric Com- pany was free to use British business's biggest and best-known cash mountain on buying GEC shares. The first swoop netted 00 million worth, and the board has the shareholders' authority to buy more. The City imagines Lord Weinstock and Sir Kenneth Bond searching once more for a suitable takeover, turning to the Data- stream computer — 'Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the fairest of them all?' — and the computer, after a few seconds' churning and whirring, coming out with the fairy-tale answer. A simpler explanation is that GEC's is the first ever kamikaze dawn raid.
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