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A perennial complaint, often heard, is the lack of towering figures and the contested battles which once dominated the City.
The likes of Mrs Thatcher’s favourites Lord Hanson and Lord King of BA and the politically savvy Lord Weinstock don’t really exist any longer.
Most takeovers are bloodless affairs with meek boards, such as that of Royal Mail owner International Distribution Services hiding behind fiduciary duty rather than repelling marauders.
It is refreshing to see adventurous entrepreneurs departing from the script. Frasers (Sports Direct) founder Mike Ashley may have stepped back from frontline action but his ambition knows no bounds.
Demands: Frasers founder Mike Ashley (pictured) is deploying his 28% stake in fast fashion retailer Boohoo to try and remove executive chairman Mahmud Kamani
He is already engaged in a spat with Malaysian tycoon Ong Beng Seng for control of Britain’s sagging luxury leather concern Mulberry.
Now Ashley is deploying his 28 per cent stake in troubled online fast-fashion retailer Boohoo to try to remove executive chairman Mahmud Kamani.
He is taking a leaf out of the book of American activist Elliott, which just organised a triumphal coup at US carrier Southwest Airlines. The Frasers honcho has launched a fight to remove Kamani and inject himself and colleague Mike Lennon onto the board.
He has picked a soft target. Since the pandemic, Boohoo has been on a downward trajectory. Recent half-year results were dismal, governance remains disappointing and the UK supply chain is still not fully reformed.
Ashley wants the board seat at the December annual meeting and a subsequent extraordinary meeting to kick Kamani into touch.
It is good to see that Ashley, who has faced his own governance and employment challenges, is still up for the fray.
He is clearly anxious to recapture his interest in the Debenhams brand, having lost out to Boohoo when the department store failed.
Ashley is not the only big name to be creeping out of the shadows.
Nat Rothschild, inheritor of the famous family peerage, is out to create a new electronics empire through his Volex vehicle which has been knocked back twice in its effort to win control of TT Electronics with a £249million offer.
Rothschild is going hostile, appealing to TT investors, headed by Fidelity, Blackrock and Aberdeen, to urge the board to accept the Volex deal. Normally, one would expect a Rothschild to be a winner.
But Nat has form: he and co-investors in Indonesian coal venture Bumi ended up with a bloody nose a decade ago. Some investors have elephantine memories.
Maelstrom
The troubles of the Royal Mail owner IDS mount. It is the latest big employer to reveal it is set for a hit from Labour’s tax on jobs, with a prospective bill of £120million.
The bigger issue for the Royal Mail is the outcome of an Ofcom review into rebooting the universal service obligation.
It requires the postal service to deliver letters at the same price to everywhere in the country six days a week.
Indications are that Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds will give the go ahead to the £3.6billion bid (£5.6billion including debt) from Daniel Kretinsky following a national security and investment review.
The bigger issue for shareholders is the Ofcom inquiry.
If, following market testing, the regulator allows a premium first-class six-day delivery service, at a price even higher than the current £1.65p, and a limited second-class service, then the economics could be radically changed.
Kretinsky is able to offer the unions iron-clad wage and job guarantees because he can see the opportunity of easy profits from an underwhelming, debt-fuelled bid.
Shareholders should replace chairman Keith Williams and tell the ‘Czech Sphinx’ to take a hike.
Wrong-footed
JD Sports shares sank 15.5 per cent to a two-year low after it lowered its 2024 profit forecast to a shade below £1billion.
But when you walk the streets of London and other cities across the globe, it is hard not to think that the company, which has rights to the Nike and Adidas trainer brands, is in the right space.
Unlike other UK shrinking violets, JD is daring to expand organically and through acquisition with its latest target French rival Courir. That shows rare ambition.
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