CITY AND SUBURBAN
Abbey: a good thing for the annual outing and for share-owning too
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
This is the week of the City's annual works outing. The office boys are left to man the screens — while their seniors go happily off with an extra £15 million to play up at the races. They have drawn the money from the Abbey National. It is their fee for underwriting its share issue, and they will not have a safer bet between the St James's Palace Stakes and the Woking- ham. As for the Abbey's five million members, they too should be on a winning double, with their shares in the new company and their preferential right to put in for more (leave the application as late as possible, just in case things go wrong this is an event where you do not get longer odds by betting ante-post). Most of the members — anything up to four million will become shareholders in a quoted company for the first time in their lives, and the Abbey will ease the transition by offering them a share-dealing scheme de- signed to be cheap and straightforward. The scheme will run for three months, but Abbey would like to keep it going, and will do if people are using it. The Abbey can do what the privatisers have never done provide a retail share-dealing business with outlets in the High Streets, so that the customers, if they are happy with the shares they have bought, can come back for more. A number of major companies, ICI among them, are watching Abbey's example, and considering whether they should encourage their own private share- holders by offering them a dealing service. ICI of course does not have branches in the High Streets — but couldn't it use Abbey's? And wouldn't Abbey's scheme gain from the extra volume of business? No privatisation has done as much as the Abbey can now do towards an active share-owning democracy.
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