Should the bid go through and there is little doubt that it

Should the bid go through, and there is little doubt that it will be cleared, then Scottish Television will own Glasgow’s daily, evening and freesheet newspapers and a number of magazines and electronic publishing ventures – becoming easily the UK’s biggest regional concentration of media power.
All well and good, at least say some in Scotland. But then into the frame steps David Montgomery, the Irish chief executive of Mirror Group, and some fainthearts reach for their salts. The man who runs News International in Scotland, with its tartanised Scottish Sun, used to run the Daily Record And so it goes on. Lost? Well, unless you understand the dramatis personae you miss the real fun going on. What concerns some fearful folk is that Scottish Television’s pounds 120m bid made last Thursday for Caledonian would result in the west of Scotland and Glasgow being dominated by one multimedia company. It now seems as inevitable as a wonky supermarket trolley that it will be tempted into a pounds 2.5bn bid for Docks de France, the beleaguered French supermarket chain.

Any such excursion will force Tesco into a hefty cash call.P&O rose 9p to 492p, apparently reflecting satisfaction with the institutional view chairman Lord Sterling should bid a sad farewell and reports of property sales and hopes of more relaxation on its ferry operations.Ahead of today’s expected Civil Aviation Authority pricing package BAA, the airports group, fell 7p to 478p. Six weeks ago the shares were 1,074p.Hanson remained depressed, down to 167p, and BTR suffered another humiliating slide, off 5.5p at 235.5p, another 12-month low. Tomkins, too, fell victim to the conglomerate discontent, losing its recent strength to fall 9p to 254p.British Energy, already dubbed a privatisation too far, suffered its own form of meltdown. The partly-paid shares managed a modest 3p premium in early trading but collapsed under the weight of Sid selling, ending at 94p after touching 92.5p.According to Seaq a staggering 163.6 million shares were traded, around a quarter of the market’s volume.It seemed many institutions, allegedly underweight, decided to hold back and let the sheer power of private investor selling turn the Government’s last privatisation into the disaster many had for long predicted.Eurotherm rallied 13p to 547p on chatter departing chief executive Claes Hultman could retain an important role.Tesco was again haunted by the possibility of a French strike. A cut by James Capel left the shares floundering at 900p, off another 16p. Capel has cut from pounds 960m to pounds 840m and from pounds 1bn to pounds 900m. There have been suggestions of cannibalisation as shares have been sold to provide funds for the Bribio issue.RTZ, the resources giant, had another difficult session as another profit downgrading appeared in the wake of the Sumitomo fiasco.

Its shares gave up all pretence of holding above the crucial 2.050p rights price, ending 18p down at 2.040p. In response the nil-paid rights collapsed from 18p to just 2p; they were 403p a few weeks ago.The pounds 143.4m cash call closes tomorrow and there is clearly a very real possibility the underwriters, led by Kleinwort Benson, will for once be forced to earn their rich commissions and take up a large proportion of the shares,Some have blamed the Bribio rights for much of the disarray in biotech sector. It could, therefore, be argued that NP was responsible for the poor start made by Footsie which, allowing for dividend payments, was in positive territory until a weak New York display had an unexpectedly crunching impact.Footsie ended the session 30 points down at 3,698.3 with, at least for the time being, hopes of lower interest rates tossed aside .It was another unhealthy session for hard-pressed British Biotech. The payment, including a special dividend of 100p a share, had been known about for weeks and it was surprising the market was not prepared to factor it into its calculations much nearer the date of declaration rather than wait until the shares went ex-dividend.No less than 10.2 points were wiped from the FT-SE 100 index by the NP payment.

There was nothing untoward at the UK’s biggest generator. It had merely picked yet another of those days when the stock market was wilting to reward its own shareholders.
NP’s dividend has a gross valuation of 147p and a net worth of 117.6p. As savings mount, and as part of those savings are invested overseas, expect the proportion of earnings from this source to rise everywhere.Wise portfolio management will matter more and more.. National Power made a determined bid to unplug Footsie with its shares off a staggering 145p at 389p.

On any realistic assessment British Energy is likely to prove a stupendous cash cow for the next 40 years and if that is not enough it is quite prepared to pay dividends out of capital.It is just as well the Government now has nothing left to sell. It is some political achievement to short-change simultaneously both taxpayers and investors. This time there isn’t even Professor Stephen Littlechild or Clare Spottiswoode to pin the blame on.Institutions used brawn, not brainsEurotherm’s temperature controls and sensors are hardly the most exciting of products but the shenanigans in its boardroom have made compulsive viewing over the past two weeks. If Claes Hultman, the autocratic Swede who huffed out of the company after failing to oust its chairman, is reinstated it will represent a first in the colourful history of corporate bust-ups.If there has been another instance of a chief executive demanding to be made executive chairman, being over-ruled by his company’s non-executives, resigning, being wooed back by a couple of powerful institutions and returning to exactly the job he resigned, it has passed us by. If the price was undermined by a wave of selling from small investors hoping for a fast buck but instead getting a swift loss, it suggests either that the Sids have learnt nothing from a decade of popular capitalism or that the Government’s dream of share- holding democracy is as empty as ever.If the answer lies in an investment strike by institutions then the implications are equally bad. This offer was made about as bargain basement as the Government dared, and still nobody could be persuaded to buy. And don’t forget that the Docklands Light Railway also broke down and the pollen count was high We are still checking the sun spots.