Papal blast
THE City pope has slapped down Monsig- nor William Rees-Mogg. The Monsignor, you may recall, has been preaching marital fidelity between companies and their banks, but as a one-way virtue — banks must practise it, companies need not. On these lines the General Electric Company, of which he is a director, has made a formal complaint to the Bank of England about Barclays. GEC, so the complaint apparent- ly runs, is at pains to spread its business fairly among the big banks, and is there- fore scandalised that one of them should back a bid against it. The Bank accepts neither the premise nor the conclusion. Its Governor, Robin Leigh-Pemberton, preached a pointed sermon of his own this week, on the difference between rela- tionship banking (matrimonial) and trans- actional banking (wham, barn, thank you, ma'am). Companies which expect loyalty, he said, 'cannot at the same time exercise their rights to shop around for the cheapest deal or to make a practice of playing off bank against bank'. Companies which play the field must expect their bankers to see things the same way. Perhaps the Monsig- nor had better go into retreat.
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