CITY AND SUBURBAN
That daft office memo can win you champagne let's hear it for bowls, planted, personal
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
It is two thousand years since Caesar Augustus sent out the first memo, on uni- versal taxation: memorandum est ut univer- sus orbis profiteretur. Nowadays memos are wordier. Stylistic conventions have grown up around them. A tax-collector like St Matthew would be marking all his memos 'cc: Caesar'. (The Imperial copy would not, of course, have been sent out.) This art- form of office life has riot had its just recog- nition, though a few choice specimens are preserved in private archives. I treasure the Midland Bank's memo on bowls, planted, personal: 'After providing the necessary one month's notice, it is necessary to cancel the maintenance contracts on the planted bowls for those officials below the rank of General Manager. As and when plants die they will not be replaced by the Bank, nor may they be replaced and claimed against expenses.' (0 The McWilliam Collection.) The surreal — not to say daft — quality that stamps a classic memo has become more visible as managers spend less time on running businesses and more time on substitution activities, such as global human resource co-ordination, drafting mission statements, exchanging performance reviews and complying with codes. This process has been defined by Scott Adams in The Dilbert Principle. Managers used to be promoted to the level of their own incompetence — the Peter Principle. Now, Mr Adams says, they are promoted to get them out of the way. So when they reach their destination they have nothing to do but write memos. To honour their art-form, and to show that they, too, have their uses, I announce the City and Suburban Daft Memo Contest. Skim through your in-tray and forward your daftest incoming memo to me — by 30 December, please. A hand- some magnum of Veuve Clicquot cham- pagne and a copy of The Dilbert Principle for the outright winner, with four more copies for the runners up. Memo: go for it.
Bah! Bubble!
I HAVE always sympathised with Scrooge — he stood for so much that was character- istic of the old City — so I enjoyed Alan Greenspan's appearance as a spectre at the markets' Christmas party, crying 'Bah! Bub- ble!' Those few unkind words from the chairman of the US Federal Reserve — 'inflated, exuberant, irrational' — went down like crumbs of indigestible cheese. Two months ago when I was in New York, the Wall Street party was just getting into its stride. The world's biggest economy, as val- ued by its stock market, was worth half as much again as it had been two years earlier, fortunes had been earned or made and new investors were still piling in. The scene was one of vision and boundless hope and opti- mism, I reported, quoting Professor Charles Amos Dice, who said the same thing in the late 1920s. Those hopes were dupes, but as I said: 'At such a time investors can see the rewards more clearly than the risks. I dare say there are more rewards to come but to me the great bull market of the 1990s has begun to look risky.' Now the sage of the Fed has his eye on the risks. It will not make either of us popular, but as our old City friend used to growl: 'It's enough for a man to mind his own business.'
So sorry
THE Treasury's relations with the Bank of England are not subject to seasonal adjust- ment — the two of them remain the best of enemies. So I am pleased to report that the Treasury is cooling down, after last week's fire and after the message of sympathy it received from the Bank on the day. This was couched in the traditional form: 'Noth- ing trivial, we hope.'
Hope over experience
IF you are not doing anything on Friday, 27 December, you might pop along to the Brewery, Chiswell Street, where T & N is having a shareholders' meeting. This com- pany has changed its name to its initials, since the days when as Turner & Newall it was better known as Britain's leading maker of asbestos. Now T & N is providing — in full, so it says — for its liabilities, and the shareholders have been convened to pay the bill. Their chairman, Sir Colin Hope, will ask them to let their capital be written down from £725 million to £290 million. They may well feel that to invest in this company has been, in Dr Johnson's words, a triumph of Hope over experience. The few days after Christmas are popular with chairmen who have embarrassing meetings to face and hope that no one will turn up, but I am sure that Sir Colin's timetable was dictated by events or by his advisers, N.M. Rothschild. Proxies must be in by 10.30 a.m. on 25 December.
Room at the inn
A TASTEFUL message from Moshe Kat- sav, Israel's deputy prime minister and min- ister for tourism, appears in the Financial Times. 'Digging for gold?' he asks. 'Nazareth serves it to you on a silver plat- ter.' To businesspersons and entrepreneurs, his Land Administration is marketing lots for development. In the year 2000, he says, millions of tourists are expected to visit Nazareth: 'Development of the first tourist site, which will alleviate the current short- age of hotels in the area, is beginning now.' If Mr Katsav has anything to do with it, there will be plenty of room at the inn. He does not explain what it is about the year 2000 that will bring all these people to Nazareth, but perhaps it is a birthday.
Follow that star
LIGHTS are burning late in the European Commission, which has been disturbed by the appearance of a star in the east. This is seen as a challenge to the Common Con- stellation Policy, requiring, as it does, all of Europe's stars to remain in fixed positions relative to one another at all times. It is thought that if they stay like that for long enough, they will turn into a supernova. The new star may also be in breach of the Solar Convergence Directive, which pro- vides for the sun to rise and set at the same times across the European Union. 'This is the moment of truth,' says the Sidereal Commissioner, Herodes Magnus. 'We must act now to nip any threat in the bud.' Back in London, the Chancellor's wise persons are split on their advice, as usual, but Pro- fessor Tim Congdon thinks the star should be followed.
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