CITY AND SUBURBAN
Hanson's bid: the referee was fair but the system isn't
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
To be proposed for a knighthood by Harold Wilson and for a peerage by Margaret Thatcher is evidence that James Hanson is impartial, or at least that he can rub along with whatever government is going. He and the going Government now find themselves charged with rubbing along too closely. His bid for Imperial Group escaped the net of the Monopolies Commission, while the alternative, Impe- rial's bid for United Biscuits, was caught. (United is now trying to get round this by bidding for Imperial: what a game!) Lord Hanson's critics, or rather the Prime Minis- ter's, hint heavily that he endeared himself to her by buying Westland shares and voting them — well, as Michael Heseltine would not have wished. In fact, the politic- al embarrassment was of another sort. Sir Gordon Borne at the Office of Fair Trad- ing recommended, on the straightforward grounds of competition and market share, that the one deal should be taken and the other left. Ministers saw trouble coming: could not both be treated alike? Sir Gor- don, in reply, appears to have taken the line (and it would be characteristic) that the Secretary of State for Trade had the power to overrule his recommendations, but failing that, it was not for the Office of Fair Trading to change the law or the Policy but to apply them even-handedly as it found them. It would find them far harder if a reference to the Monopolies Commission did not, in nine cases out of ten, kill a bid stone-dead, simply by delay. The Commission takes six or nine months to make up its mind. Cut that delay out, and the system would be fairer to Lord Hanson and everybody else.
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