CITY AND SUBURBAN
A long farewell to Millbank's limewood corridors — the Offswitchers are moving in
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Head offices are out of fashion, and Imperial Chemical Industries is saying farewell to its Millbank palazzo. No more will its directors roam their limewood- panelled corridors or gaze out across the Thames to Lambeth, looking down on the Archbishop of Canterbury. Even in ICI's heyday, Millbank was sometimes nick- named Millstone. Economising on head offices is a technique pioneered by Sir Brian Pitman at Lloyds TSB, and he has shown how it can make mergers pay. Now, though, financial businesses like his have suddenly gone out of fashion, too. The fashionable ones are up in cyberspace and you need a computer to reach them. The merger of the week is in insurance, and Commercial Union, General Accident and Norwich Union must have some spare head offices between them, but the prospect leaves the market cold. It was a mistake to puff this deal up as a merger of equals. Sun Alliance and the Royal had one of those — jobs for all the boys at the top — with pre- dictable results, or lack of them. As busi- nesses move out of their head offices, the new growth industries are moving in: the regulators. The Financial Services Autho- rity can seat 2,000 people in its tower down in Docklands, and Ofgem, which regulates gas and electricity, is taking over Millbank. I cannot think this is a change for the bet- ter, though I hope that the Offswitchers enjoy the view.
Barclays' little list
MOVING into Barclays, Matt Barrett, its latest in new chief executives, has been happy to discover 12 different head offices. He sees scope for economy here, and I hope he will start with the eyesore in Lombard Street. 'The great advantage of this design,' said the project manager, 'is that it will never become a listed building.' Martin Vander Weyer tells the story in Falling Eagle (Wei- denfeld & Nicolson, £20), his account of Barclays' bumpy ride from world challenger to comeback kid. He puts his finger on the Special List, which was the inside track reserved for managers with family connec- tions. In my observation, these managers helped to keep Barclays lively and unbur- eaucratic, but the transition away from a family business will always be tricky, espe- cially when the families still think they own it but cannot or will not put up the money it needs. That was Barclays' trouble. Deryk Vander Weyer, Martin's father, came up the bank the hard way, resented the Special List and was passed over for the chairmanship. I once urged him to ginger up the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which Barclays then sponsored. 'Christopher,' he said, 'don't you think it's difficult enough to run a bloody bank, without running an opera company too?' As Ko-Ko sings in The Mikado, 'I've got a little list.'
Invincible ignorance
THE directors of Trinity Mirror have kicked their dogs to teach their cat a lesson. They were disturbed (or should have been) to find that the editor of the Daily Mirror, which they publish, had invested £20,000 in an obscure stock on the day before his City column tipped it. Now they have sacked the tipsters but left the editor in place. They accept that he was too busy to know what was going to be in the column. The broker who acted for the editor has for some rea- son been sacked, too. I was saying last week that to buy shares and then tip them is or should be a hanging offence, but that if this was the rule at the Mirror, the editor might be embarrassed to enforce it. The directors have acted to spare him any future embar- rassment. From now on, the Mirror's finan- cial journalists will be forbidden to own shares. I hope that this principle will be applied across the paper. Thus, the Mirror's wine (or lager) correspondent must be a member of the Band of Hope, and its agony aunt a vestal virgin. Then they, too, can plead invincible ignorance.
Ready, steady, whoops
BRITAIN in Europe has relaunched itself this week and landed in its usual posture. I cannot improve on the Guardian's stone- faced correction: 'The National Institute of Economic and Social Research points out that, contrary to what we said, nowhere in the report which it prepared for Britain in Europe does it declare that withdrawal from the European Union would result in "the British economy shrinking by 2 per cent a year, causing a deep recession". This infor- mation was given to the Guardian by Britain in Europe itself. The NIESR says that no one could possibly believe that such conse- quences would follow a withdrawal.' The NIESR's Martin Weale thinks that Britain in Europe may have been too stupid to under- stand his report. I wonder how many more launches will see the Prime Minister, or even the omnipresent Lord Marshall, on board.
Clearing the Drain
LONDON's new mayor can expect an early knock on his door from Michael Cassidy. The two of them should compare notes, for Michael was a powerful chairman of the Corporation of London's policy and resources committee — in effect, as he once said, the City's prime minister, with the Lord Mayor as its constitutional monarch. Now he has popped up as chair- man of Line, which is bidding to put the London Underground to rights. Alcatel, Mowlem, Bombardier, Fluor and Anglia Water make up the Linc consortium, three franchises will be on offer for the different lines and Line is pitching for them all. Although they are not in the mayor's gift, he has a general responsibility for transport and would be a welcome ally or a danger- ous enemy. Having blown all its own money on building a line to the Dome and Canary Wharf, London Underground needs to let someone else have a go. I count on Line to clear the Drain and keep the black hole in the Aldgate area free of signal failures.
Two day wonder
TO BE the grandest hotel in the City is not saying much, so I wish the Great Eastern well. Sir Terence Conran has restored it and reopens it this week. This monument to the railway age had fallen on hard times. A City friend of mine, against his better judgment, once tried to book a visitor in. He asked the girl at the desk for a room for two days and her eyes widened. 'Most of the gentlemen,' she said, 'only book for two hours.'
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