CITY AND SUBURBAN
Lay down some Eurotunnel for your godson it's a Channel port
CHRISTOPHER FILD ES Tony and Caroline Doggart, the Gault and Millau of the tax haven, for many years gave their top rating to the New Hebrides. They would point out in succes- sive editions of their Good Haven Guide, Tax Havens and their Uses, that these South Pacific islands had the unique advan- tage of being an Anglo-French condomi- nium. In consequence, the arrangements which made them such magnets to the wandering taxpayer could not be changed except by agreement between the British and French governments. The odds against the two countries' governments agreeing on anything were and are always reason- ably long, and longer still against any moment of agreement, if it were to be reached, being wasted on the constitution of the New Hebrides. The same argument is now digging for victory on behalf of Eurotunnel. Here is an investment of a kind more familiar in the 17th or 19th centuries than our own — a concession, a chartered company, with an exclusive lic- ence from the sovereign government, in this case from two sovereign governments. They promise to give the concessionaries a clear run to the year 2042. The deal takes its form from the Prime Minister's insist- ence that the tunnel must be built without a penny of the Government's money. In- stead, the Government puts in the conces- sion. The concessionaries in their turn are enabled to say that, if their sums work out into the next century, their investors will get their money back, every year, in their dividends. The concession is the novelty which distinguishes this attempt at a tunnel from all its predecessors and has made it possible for the work to go ahead. It marks a personal triumph for Alastair Morton, co-chairman of Eurotunnel at our end. He came in nine months ago to a company in a state of civil war, with credit and credibility to match. He set Eurotunnel on its own feet, and showed that it could stand up to the contractors, the railways, the bankers, the ferrymen, and anybody else who would stand and fight. Digging the tunnel may be easier. It can be likened to William Stern's record-breaking bankruptcy, of which the accountant said: 'It's just an ordinary one with a few extra noughts on the end.'
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