CITY AND SUBURBAN
A hollow clang and a recorded excuse Lloyd's gets resigned to it
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Lloyd's of London moved swiftly to restore confidence this week on news that the Lutine Bell had resigned. Underwriters returning to their wooden boxes in Lloyd's high-technology building noticed its absence shortly after lunch, and its loss was entered In the Accidents Book with a state-of-the-art quill pen. a only they knew where it was,' said a broker, 'they'd ring it.' The historic Bell had been a fixture at Lloyd's for a cen- tury, clanging once for bad news and (occa- sionally) twice for good news. Its resignation is the latest - in a series of imperfectly explained departures from Lloyd's, whose chief executive got on his bike a week ago. He followed the head of regulation, the director of the Equitas project (otherwise known as the Moshe Dayan gambit — 'If we lose the war? Then we'll start a new one in the wife's name') and the finance director who lasted a month — not to mention the deputy chairman who felt the need to spend more time with his lawyers. By now Lloyd's has a drill for these things. Word was put out unattributably that there had been no rift with the Bell, that its work had been sub- stantially completed, that it found Lloyd's demanding and difficult, that it had not real- ly been up to the job, that it had gone native, that it had been made a good offer and that the new bell, promoted from Lloyd's twelfth-floor belfry, was a great improvement. Lloyd's has recorded this message and uses it on all occasions. Run to earth in Corney & Barrow's champagne bar, the Bell explained that it was overworked and thought it was time to move on. The Place was a madhouse, it said. Members of some of Lloyd's better-known syndicates asked how they, too, could resign and move on, but the Bell's only response was a single hollow clang.
Right first time
THIS WEEK'S winning tickets are held by Cadbury Schweppes, Racal, De La Rue, International Computers and an American outfit called G-Tech. They are the lucky shareholders in Camelot, which runs the National Lottery and must be out on its own as this country's most successful brand-new company. What that says about the country, and what those high-minded Quaker cocoa vendors are doing in a business like this, may be debated, but there is no arguing with the figures. Camelot got its licence eighteen months ago, the lottery has been up and running for a year, and in the six months to 30 September the company made £36 mil- lion before tax — not a bad rate of return on its shareholders' investment of £50 million. I see it as a triumph for the Ross Harvey test of companies, which is, as you may remem- ber: Do the things they make work? There was plenty of scope for Camelot's things not to work — for the usual stories of glitches and gremlins and teething troubles which go with new ventures (example: Le Shuttle) by way of excuses. Getting it right first time has paid dividends. The terms of Camelot's licence make it a one-project company, but if the shareholders are wondering where to repeat their success, I can help them. As a sport and a national institution, racing is my idea of a good cause in need of money. So I urge them to bid for the Tote.
Crossed wires
I AM not sure that I could tell a cable from a wireless, but then, like Lord Young, I am no technician. That did not stop him becoming executive chairman of Cable & Wireless on an income that approached seven figures. Now the boardroom comings and goings that marked his reign have culminated in a loud explosion, blowing him and his chief execu- tive right out. He had arrived with a recom- mendation from his previous employer, Mrs Margaret Thatcher: 'Other people bring me problems, David brings me solutions.' His colleagues have certainly found one.
Where there's a tip . . .
NOT WISHING to intrude on the Princess of Wales's privacy, I left her to talk to the air and spent Monday evening with the Lord Mayor, listening to the Prime Minister. His Guildhall speech, billed as a definitive state- ment of position on the single currency, so lost his hearers that when he had finished they quite failed to notice, and only applauded when somebody popped up to take his lectern away. He did better with his Budget tip. This seems to come from Mr Chris Patten, who has been saying that Asia's economies have grown to be tigers because they do not have overweight gov- ernments riding on their backs. The Prime Minister said so too, and pledged his gov- ernment not to consume more than two fifths of the national income. Stand by for cuts, not in tax revenues or public spending — which has, of course, risen by 50 per cent since he took over — but in tax rates and spending plans. Marvel as private finance is wheeled in to pay for public projects, like widening the road between Carlisle and Newcastle. Gasp as the quickness of the hand deceives the eye. When this Budget first loomed towards us, there might have been room for a modest down-payment on a bumper vote-winning number next year. This was to assume that the next Budget would come before the next election did. Like other pre-Budget assumptions, it has now been made subject to revision.
. . . there's a tap
IF THIS is indeed to be Mr Kenneth Clarke's last Budget, he will want to leave us something to enjoy. I commend the exam- ples of two of his loftiest predecessors: Gladstone, deemed the greatest Chancellor of all, and Stafford Cripps — 'there, but for the grace of God', grumbled Churchill, 'goes God.' Both slashed the duties on table wines. Gladstone put decent wines (the `Gladstone clarets') on middle-class tables. Cripps, who was teetotal, wanted to help the French economy recover from the war. Looking at the boom that British thirsts and British taxes have now brought to the Pas de Calais, Mr Clarke might think that this recovery has gone quite far enough.
Trial and error
I HAVE been telling the National Westmin- ster Bank to cheer up. It feels pained by such newspaper stories as 18,000 bill for £2,000 overdraft: NatWest's incredible charges.' Look on the bright side, I said there could have been worse headlines this week. How lucky that Frederick West was not christened Nathaniel.
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