CITY AND SUBURBAN
Bringing a touch of class to the supply of M&S's knickers
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
splendid dinner at Grosvenor House this week launched Britain's newest major company, Courtaulds Textiles — or relaunched it, for Courtaulds and textiles had meant the same thing ever since 1828, when the first Samuel Courtauld set up in Essex as a manufacturer of silk mourning crêpe. Now Courtaulds has split off its textiles from the rest of the group as an independent company, with Martin Taylor taking the wheel at the age of 37. Mr Taylor has got where he is by sensibly declining an approach from me. He was at the time a City journalist, the star of the Financial Times's Lex column, and I hoped to lure him away — but Courtaulds' chairman Sir Christopher Hogg had the same idea and got his man. Sir Christopher is someone who believes that if you are good enough you are old enough (he himself became chairman at 43) and that class will tell. I like to see those principles being brought into action, not just in the rarefied world of the City, but in the more practical skills of supplying Marks & Spencer's incomparable knickers. Succes- sive governments (and, even more so, their Whitehall advisers) have too readily writ- ten off textiles as something we can let foreigners make, and we can be grateful that Sir Christopher does not agree with them. As for Mr Taylor, his first test will be to avoid British business's most lethal accolade — for I fear he looks a sitting duck to be Guardian Young Businessman of the Year.
Previous page
