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It would be nice to think that showman Michael Grade's final circus trick at ITV was to engineer the appointment of Archie Norman as his replacement. Nice, but almost certainly not true.
However glowing the two men's comments about each other were in the ITV press release, they are not bosom buddies. Indeed, Norman is careful to say while he “likes and admires” Grade, they are not close friends.
That's a good thing because it means Norman will be his own master and get straight on with his first key task of recruiting a new chief executive for ITV. It also means the door has reopened for the best man for that role — current chief operating officer and soon-to-be interim chief executive John Cresswell.
It is a badly kept secret that although Grade promoted Cresswell from finance director to COO shortly after he arrived three years ago, the two did not get on well. Grade preferred to be accompanied on lunches with investors and commentators by the more urbane, Aston Martin-driving commercial director Rupert Howell. He is very good at laughing at Grade's jokes.
But in the City, it is Cresswell that people want to talk to. He is widely credited with leading the cost-cutting that will see ITV reduce its annual costs by £155 million by the end of this year. He has led the attack on overmanning at studios and in administration. He also masterminded the potential “get out of jail” card for ITV's pension fund deficit by pledging it the assets and cashflow of digital network SDN.
Cresswell has also reduced ITV's debt by £75 million and rescheduled most of the remaining borrowings out to 2013.
Yet despite the scale of the restructuring, ITV has lost little in terms of programming. Under Grade and Cresswell, and more recently director of television Peter Fincham, the broadcaster has recaptured its position as the deliverer of mass audiences at peak times. Next month's final of the X Factor is likely to pull in as many as 20 million viewers. That's a scale its main commercial rival Sky can still only dream of — and advertisers will pay top dollar.
Norman has said he is ruling nothing in and nothing out when it comes to the hunt for a new chief executive. But it is a good sign that Cresswell has agreed to stay on at as interim chief executive for the next six months.
Norman freely admits he is no broadcaster. Cresswell has 20 years' experience in the ITV industry.
Investors welcomed Norman's arrival. They should now try to convince him that Cresswell really is his best right-hand man.
Clipping too much from the true value?
Avast me hearties, for I have a stirring tale to tell of the High Seas and buccaneering adventurers.
For those of tender years, let me remind you that Putney-born Sir Robin Knox-Johnston was the first person to sail single-handed and non-stop around the world. His voyage lasted 10 months from June 1968 to April 1969.
Some 30 years later, the adventurer, who is now aged 70, launched Clipper Ventures, which runs a round-the-world yacht race every two years and offers sail training and corporate hospitality to businesses.
Clipper Ventures was listed on the very junior Ofex stock market in 1998 and transferred to the less junior Alternative Investment Market in 1999.
In June of this year, Clipper lowered its pennant and delisted from AIM. Then quietly this week Knox-Johnston and his friends launched a takeover bid to take the business private again. He is offering just 5p a share, valuing Clipper at £1.95 million, and already has the support of holders of 73% of the shares.
The independent directors of Clipper call the offer “fair and reasonable” but the minority shareholders would be justified in calling it anything but.
Over the decade in which it has been a public company, Clipper Ventures has called on investors no fewer than nine times, raising a total of almost £5 million through share placings at prices ranging from 12½p to 58p.
Now Knox-Johnston is offering less than a tenth of that latter price to take Clipper private. He argues that it is proving difficult to raise sponsorship for the 2011 race and that the firm's income and profits are very lumpy, mainly falling in the year the biennial race finishes rather than the one when it starts. He also says the fleet will need replacing at a cost of some £6 million between now and 2013.
There is nothing new in any of the above arguments, which were used to justify the delisting, and arguably investors are being offered something, which is better than nothing.
But the majority, who have lost as much as 90% of their original investment, have a right to feel aggrieved. Clipper Ventures had £2.5 million of cash in the bank at the end of April yet the bidder is valuing the company at less than that. In effect, Knox-Johnston and his crew are buying what remains a perfectly good business for less than nothing.
There is a moral to this sad tale: put not your faith in risky maritime ventures.
More meddling with the banks just will not pay
Alistair Darling's plans to give the Financial Services Authority legal powers to control bankers' bonuses and even “void” contracts it does not like is a non-starter.
The broad principles of the Remuneration Code issued by the FSA in August and signed up to by all the major banks working in London should be enough.
But politicians, with all eyes on the coming general election and a public which currently rates bankers lower than estate agents or journalists, cannot refrain from meddling further.
The measures outlined in yesterday's Queen's Speech are micro-management of banks' affairs to a ridiculous level.
The FSA simply does not have the manpower to read every one of the tens of thousands of contracts that are written for bankers every year. The banks also have a very strong case for claiming that voiding contracts would be illegal.
But in any case, as we all know, the banks will soon find a way around the new rules. Fancy some platinum bars in a vault in Panama, anyone?
