CITY AND SUBURBAN
Britain's most incorrect company chairman lands himself in a steel scrap
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
We haven't had a good steel scrap for ages, and Andrew Cook is a scrapper after my own heart. He is chairman and Lord High Everything Else of William Cook, the Sheffield steel founders, now on the receiv- ing end of a £58 million takeover bid from Triplex Lloyd. He could also claim to be the most incorrect chairman — politically, Cadbuarially, Euromanically — of any British company. He showed no respect for Europe's exchange rate mechanism while we were still in it. He hailed our forced exit: 'Our withdrawal from the ERM is most welcome, as is the drop in interest rates.' He made and starred in a video about his subsidised competitors in Europe. He took them to the European Court and won — Brussels, so the court ruled, should never have allowed the Span- ish government to pour 680 million pesetas into the foundry of its choice and melt them down. He took on Sir Edward Heath in front of the cameras, and melted him down, too. Only last month, when the Financial Times carried a round-robin let- ter from a group of businessmen anxious not to be shut out of the single currency, Mr Cook waded into them: 'They are not, on the whole, people fighting for market share across the coalface of industry.' He was already engaged with Manifest, which casts votes on behalf of big investors too busy or idle to take their own decisions. Manifest charged William Cook with driv- ing a coach and horses through the Cad- bury and Greenbury codes: it had no com- mittees to deal with audit and remunera- tion (the board took responsibility for these things, as the law provides) and only two non-executive directors, while Mr Cook doubled as chairman and chief executive, on a five-year contract. He replied that these codes were not mandatory and that plenty of companies did not see it as rele- vant to comply with them lock, stock and barrel. Now, I suppose, all this will be taken down and used in evidence against him.
Founders keepers
ANDREW Cook would rather fight the bid on his company's merits: 'They've picked the wrong target. One thing I have got is a very, very sound business.' His father had wanted to shut it, but Mr Cook ousted him and pulled it round, sleeping in a camp-bed on the foundry floor. Arthur Woods of Selus Equipment, after 50 years in the industry, rates Mr Cook the best thing to have hap- pened to it in a generation, and calls his six foundries the most profitable steel group in Europe: 'William Cook is his life. It would be a great shame and loss if he were to be brought down by the accountants of Triplex.' It would certainly be a shame if he were brought down for incorrectness. He has offered to give up his contract, and to set up the boardroom committees which he has called unnecessarily bureaucratic and divi- sive, if his investors want that. One of them has been quoted as saying that a more com- pliant company would have been more high- ly valued — or, in a broker's words: 'William Cook was a sitting duck because the board was just Andrew Cook.' Brokers and investors who could see beyond the covers of their codebooks would judge Mr Cook not by his correctness but by his effects.
Clarke stands fast
THE day the Treasury caught fire, Kenneth Clarke had an alibi. He was on his way back from Brussels where he had been trying to make sure that neither end of the Irish sawn-off shotgun was pointed at us. This, as you may remember, was the monetary weapon first flaunted in Dublin, with the wrong end sawn off. It would be used to punish countries which, under Europe's new monetary dispensation, borrowed too much money. How would they be punished? By being fined. How would they raise the fines? By borrowing more money. It has not deterred his fellow finance ministers from doctoring their budgets so as to seem to qualify for the single currency. France's was waved through by some well-placed French Eurocrats, but Italy's is more blatant, and the Greeks must be tempted to make a cri- sis out of a drachma. Mr Clarke's own bud- get was doctored too, but never mind, He is out there in front, standing up for the British government's policy, which is not to have one. Next week the Prime Minister is supposed to be standing up for it again, in Dublin. These arrangements are now under visible strain, but the same could be said of the arrangements for a single currency.
Coolness under fire
THE fire itself was a triumph. It is alleged to have started in the basement, though the Treasury's basement is notoriously water- logged. It broke out in a pile of statistics: spontaneous combustion? Ministers were led to safety and mandarins watched from a pub across the road. Their labyrinthine building has been booked for redevelop- ment, so as to show off their Private 'Finance Inititiative, which needs all the help it can get. As every developer knows, a good fire clears the site and gets you out of trouble with a listed building. I trust that this one will not break out again, betrayed by a puff of black smoke from the public finances, and complete the job. The Pyrotechnic Fire Initiative can go too far.
Pleasure at a price
SOMEWHERE in the Retail Prices Index there must be a weighting for the Bank of England's Quarterly Bulletin. This would explain why the Governor keeps warning us that inflation is on its way up. The price of a subscription to the Bulletin, which two years ago cost £24, is now being hoisted from £30 to £40. I find that a bit steep, even for all those thoughtful analyses and pretty charts. My friend Bill Clarke, the only man who claims to read the Bulletin for plea- sure, says that at this price his pleasure will be masochistic. The Bank purports to justi- fy its 33 per cent inflation rate by saying that it makes the Inflation Report, which it throws in with the Bulletin, absurdly cheap. A likely story. When they meet next week, the Chancellor should tell the Governor that inflation begins at home.
All change
A PLEASING instance of Hutber's law of improvement (= deterioration) reaches me from Swindon Junction: 'Due to enhanced security arrangements, the left-luggage facil- ity has been withdrawn until further notice.'
Previous page
