Power of the press R obert Maxwell has lon g held a
licence to print money. He came by it when he took command of the British Printing & Communications Corporation, our largest printing group. BPCC owns Waterlow, the specialist banknote printers, which supply notes to governments and central banks around the world. Let me stress that BPCC's hectic career of takeovers has been carried through without any recourse to this specialised service. The latest takeover draws in Thomas Forman of Nottingham, a specialist security printer. This fills. a gap which BPCC had twice sought to plug with its bitterly contested (and ultimately defeated) bids for John Waddington. Forman's speciality is un- usual: it prints cheque books. All that now remains is for Mr Maxwell to become a specialist sub-contractor to the Bank of England. Would this be (a) a good thing, or (b) a bad thing? This is the question we should have asked in the Spectator's and Lloyds Bank's competition for students (see page 17). Answer on one side of the paper only, and carefully.
Christopher Fildes
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