The fallout from the Southern Cross saga is far from over. We hear that Royal Bank of Scotland has “taken out” £50 million of loans, secured against 91 of the beleaguered group’s care homes, from the £1.6 billion “Project Isobel” portfolio of various boom-year property loans that it is now selling off. The homes are owned by a company ultimately controlled by the Livingstone brothers property tycoons.
Perhaps RBS felt that with the Government making it nigh on impossible politically to force Southern Cross to pay rent it cannot afford, there was no point selling loans to debt buyers whose modus operandi is loan enforcement.
Or perhaps Blackstone, one of the two prospective buyers still in the frame for Project Isobel, had a quiet word.
The US private equity group is said to be doing everything it can to distance itself from its one-time ownership of the group.
• Sally Bercow is not afraid to speak her mind but it may just have got her in some trouble with a certain carpet chain. “Haven’t Carpetright been having ‘everything must go’ sales for ever?” she tweeted after the retailer’s results Wednesday. Only to inform her followers later of the “great news” that the chain isn’t going under, and that its legal team was on her case.
Advertisement
• The Canadians seem to want investment only when it suits them. The London Stock Exchange has just aborted a merger with TMX after investors in the operator of the Toronto exchange failed to back the deal, with the likes of Quebec Premier Jean Charest saying he’d rather see it in Canadian hands.
However, he’s not always such a nationalist. Charest has been in Europe all week trying to attract investment, even seeing William Hague. Ontario’s finance minister Dwight Duncan, who celebrated the collapse of the deal as “Canadians asserting themselves,” has also been in town trying to drum up interest in his state’s bonds.
In the blue corner: Nick Aitchison
There is no doubt that the banks of the Thames will be thick with boardroom blazers this weekend as the oars break the water’s surface for the Henley Royal Regatta.
What better opportunity for Nick Aitchison to get into his stroke as a director of Hanson Green, the headhunter of non-executives. The former chairman of the Leander rowing club has 12 years’ experience in boardroom recruitment, being a former managing director of the search firm Russell Reynolds and as a partner at Stork & May, the career advisers.
Advertisement
Aitchison started his career at Mars Confectionery and did a stint at BAT before entering professional services. Non-execs, he says, are no longer flattered to sit on FTSE boards. Debate is the order of the day, and the idea that directors are interested only in the rubber stamp is wrong.
Let’s hope he’s right.