Rolls and reams
THE London paper mountain is height- ened this week by hundreds of thousands of new share certificates, each representing a toe-hold on Rolls-Royce. Many will have been sold as soon as dealings opened. The profit is there to be taken, and those still in doubt should do so. Too much of it, though, will be eaten up, possibly in interest and bank charges, certainly in charges for dealing. Those charges in their turn will be eaten up by the brokers' own costs in handling all these small holdings. So the Exchequer is the loser, for selling at a price which has been overtaken by events in the market, but there are no proportion- ate winners. Let us hope that Rolls-Royce is the last of these win-or-bust privatisa- tions — fixed-price offers in a fast-moving market. The time to think about that is before the market starts moving the other way.
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