CITY AND SUBURBAN
Three new blades, two new handles it's all change in the palace that was ICI's
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Ihave been told that the authentic crick- et bat once used by W.G. Grace is still in service. It is the original, except that over time it has had three new blades and two new handles. The authentic Imperial Chemical Industries is like that, too. It now consists of a parcel of businesses bought from Unilever, less a parcel of businesses sold to Du Pont, plus a few other business- es on which the For Sale sign is almost visi- ble, and its paints, which it still seems to like. Pharmaceuticals have flown the nest and, as Zeneca, have outgrown ICI itself. The Millbank palace, what remains of it, has now been sold to the Prudential, and the limewood corridors where the directors roamed will now be occupied by senior vice-presidents, as tenants. Only the roundel remains, until some badge engi- neer gets at it, and turns his back on an imperial past by urging that the great com- pany should now be renamed Ici plc. (Con- sultants charge fortunes for modish advice like that.) All companies need the gift of renewing themselves, and for most of its lifetime ICI had that. New ideas and prod- ucts and technologies came forward as their predecessors lost their novelty and, after that, their command of the market. Then the gift somehow faltered — much had been hoped from advanced materials, which seem to have retreated — and the new ICI will be the product of its cheque- book and its clearance sale. I wish it well, but I am not sure that this is still the com- pany whose founder said that British sci- ence and finance and management stood to be judged by its success.
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