Any other business

Our cinema is showing Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and I’m reminded of a remark attributed to Mark Twain, that ‘history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes’. On 3 October 2008, three weeks after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, treasury secretary Hank Paulson’s $700 billion bailout for the US banking system was passed into law at the very hour when I was watching the original Mamma Mia! movie and observing the impact of a mass inoculation of feelgood on a crowd battered by frightening financial news. And it was early the following Wednesday that I heard of chancellor Alistair Darling’s de facto nationalisation of RBS and Lloyds-HBOS and his emergency liquidity scheme to keep the nation’s cash machines working. ‘See Mamma Mia!

Costa, in my opinion, sells a decent cup of coffee. It employs polite youngsters who seem happy in their work. If you’re desperate for caffeine, even its petrol-station vending machines are not too bad. And unlike the UK operation of Starbucks, whose coffee is vile, it pays tax on its profits at close to the full rate of corporation tax. Founded by two Italian brothers in London’s Vauxhall Bridge Road in 1971, it’s a triumph of brand development — and a credit to its current owner Whitbread, which acquired Costa as a diversification from its own traditional brewing business in 1995. Now Costa has been sold to Coca-Cola for a handsome £3.9 billion: no wonder Whitbread chief Alison Brittain called the deal ‘absolutely stonking’.

All good things must come to an end, including summer holidays and bull markets. The bull run in US shares that began in the aftermath of the financial crisis in March 2009 has now officially passed the previous record of 3,452 more-up-than-down days from October 1990 to March 2000. This time round, the S&P500 index of US stocks has risen by more than 300 per cent — and that rise has continued throughout Donald Trump’s reign, despite his trade war threats and other follies. But it has not been reflected in major European markets, which have drifted sideways, and has been increasingly sustained by a small number of top tech stocks that have outperformed everything else on the planet.

As I set to compiling your email responses into our ‘broadband dossier’ to send to BT chairman Jan du Plessis, the government issued its own evaluation of the ‘economic impact and public value’ of the superfast broadband roll-out programme launched in 2010. Compiled by outside experts, this document from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) estimates that the additional economic activity and ‘wellbeing’ generated by spending public money to subsidise connections for remote and difficult locations: 5.3 million customers will eventually benefit at an estimated unit cost of £211, creating a total bill for the taxpayer of just over £1 billion.

This column has consistently stood up for Mike Ashley, even when the lonesome billionaire’s notions of corporate governance at Sports Direct and staff welfare at its Shirebrook warehouse made that a challenging position to sustain — not to mention his troubled ownership of Newcastle United. Ashley has grown his core business over 35 years from one outlet in Maidenhead to a remarkably robust retail empire by doing the detail, taking shrewd bets and swallowing competitors.

Those twice-weekly sales emails from Foxtons that the recent GDPR clean-up has failed to stop have lately been spattered with the words ‘recent price reduction’ in big red capitals. Hence no surprise that the glossy estate agent and bellwether of London residential property has just reported a first-half loss of £2.8 million, compared to £3.8 million profit in the first half of last year and reflecting a sharp drop in sales revenues. Chief executive Nic Budden says his marketplace ‘is undergoing a sustained period of very low activity levels’.

An IT glitch afflicting BP petrol stations for three hours last Sunday evening might not sound like headline news. A ten-hour meltdown of Visa card payment systems in June was a bigger story — as was the notorious TSB computer upgrade cock-up that started on 20 April, which was still afflicting customers a month later and was reported this week to be causing ruptures between TSB and its Spanish parent Sabadell. Meanwhile, what do Fortnum & Mason, Dixons Carphone, Costa Coffee and its sister company Premier Inn have in common with various parts of the NHS? The answer is that they have all suffered recent large-scale ‘data breaches’ that may have put private individuals’ information at risk.

I’ve been on a mini-tour, full of echoes and warnings. First, to the Grange Festival in Hampshire, where we might still have been enjoying the summer of ’87: a moneyed audience in a Barings mansion laughing at funny foreigners in John Copley’s retro Seraglio (see Richard Bratby’s crit last week). Then to Oxford, to show an American friend the gardens of my alma mater, Worcester College, and recall the sweltering heat of ’76 that distracted us from revising for finals or noticing the Labour-driven economic crisis that would blight the start of our careers that autumn. Then to London, to make light of Trump with other American friends — and back home to Helmsley, of which more in a moment.

Should he stay or should he go — or will he already have gone by the time you read this? These are frequently asked questions about chief executives whose businesses hit troubled waters. It’s true that the higher you rise, the higher the risk if you don’t deliver, but it’s not always true that bosses should walk the plank whenever something major goes wrong: sometimes it makes more sense to stick around, take the flak and solve the problem. However, in the cases of Gavin Patterson of BT (ousted a week ago) and Paul Pester of TSB (still in post as we go to press), it would be fair to say the only way is exit.

The bank holiday turned out to be a hot one, not least in the takeover arena. First, Shire Pharmaceutical accepted a £46 billion offer from Takeda of Japan — though the stock market did not seem wholly convinced that the deal will proceed. If it does, should we care? Shire is a FTSE100 company that began in the UK and ended up stateless. As a start-up in Basingstoke in 1986, it made calcium-based treatments for osteoporosis; since then it has grown by acquisition to become ‘the world’s leading global biotechnology company focused on serving patients with rare diseases’. In 2008, when it was the UK’s third biggest drug manufacturer, Shire shifted its domicile to take advantage of Ireland’s ultra-low corporate tax rates.

The season of high-street banks’ annual general meetings is with us and I urge you to turn up and make trouble. When I say ‘you’, I don’t mean the likes of New York ‘activist’ Edward Bramson — who holds 5 per cent of Barclays and may or may not agitate for a boardroom seat at next Tuesday’s gathering. I mean you, dear reader, the modest shareholder-customer who suffers rotten service, too-frequent computer glitches and negative returns on savings while directors on the platform congratulate themselves on the spurious performance measures that underpin their bonuses. This is your annual chance to make them squirm.