Wilcox's winner INMOS is the most successful privatisation there has
ever been — successful for us as the sellers, that is. This magical electronic chip-shop, set up in the days when govern- ments thought they could spot industries on which the sun would rise, was sold four years ago to Thorn EMI for £125 million. It has since lost another £300 Million and cost Thorn's chairman his job. His successor has now managed to sell it on, and even to get the equivalent of £100 million for it, which is good work — but not such good work as was done by Sir Malcolm Wilcox, chairman of Inmos when it was privatised. Sir Malcolm was the formidable Midland banker whose misfortune it is to be remem- bered as the man who bought Crocker. We should remember him gratefully as the man who sold Inmos. Taking the—two together, he must have broken even.
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