J Sainsbury and Anna Ford, who chairs its corporate responsibility committee, have been dragged into a row with the residents of the Weald of Kent over a proposed wind turbine in their back yard. Already involved is the private equity group HgCapital. The turbine is to provide power to a local farmer who supplies Sainsbury’s with fruit.
The grocery chain insists on communicating with me by e-mail, a clear sign of embarrassment in my experience.
“As we have no involvement whatsoever in this issue, we cannot comment,” Sainsbury’s says in a statement. “It would therefore be inaccurate to suggest that we are linked to this project in any way.”
Yes, but the farmer makes it clear on his website that he needs the generator to continue to supply you.
“The reference to Sainsbury’s at [the website] does not suggest we are involved in his plans. It is merely used to give some background to his company.” I should warn the grocer that the pressure group involved includes some very well-connected and well-off individuals, including one former investment banker. They aren’t going to go away.
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Spacey tries to flush out money to restore Old Vic
Kevin Spacey, the Hollywood actor and artistic director of the Old Vic, was at an event held by Pi Capital, the private equity club. Spacey told an audience including Martin Broughton and Brent Hoberman that he wants £35million to renew the building.
“The loos were bombed back in World War II and they’ve never really been repaired. On wet days, it rains in the upper circle. Believe me, if that was true of the stalls, we’d have fixed it by now.” Spacey prefers to seek funds from the private sector. With the amount of form-filling involved with government grants, “it costs you $700,000 to raise a million”.
Clouds on BA’s horizon until 2017
Cabin staff at British Airways, where the company is seeking 2,000 redundancies, receive a letter that sets out just why cost-cuts are needed. “The UK economy is not expected to fully recover until 2017.” That’s a bit gloomy by most people’s forecasts, I say to BA. They quote back The Times on this year’s Budget.
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“We, and presumably still The Times and the IFS [Institute of Fiscal Studies], are not saying there will be no economic recovery before 2017,” says BA. Actually, we were only quoting the notoriously pessimistic IFS, but go on.
“But the argument that it will take until 2017 for full recovery to the state... that existed pre-credit crunch is justified.” So there will be an economic recovery before 2017, but your staff are to be told it won’t be a full economic recovery. I see. I think.
— Still with British Airways, and a nasty moment for chief executive Willie Walsh. He has, as has been widely reported, showed solidarity with his staff by agreeing to work without pay as part of those same cost-cuts.
Walsh, whose annual salary is £735,000, will work for nothing in July following BA’s record losses announced last month. Unfortunately, he failed to clear the gesture with his wife, Walsh admitted at a lunch for airline executives in Kuala Lumpur.
“She read about it in the papers.”
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— There’s nothing like kicking a man when he’s down. After the announcement last week that Castlemaine XXXX is to be withdrawn from the UK market - you mean they still sell it? Where? - Scottish & Newcastle UK is launching a new multimillion-pound television campaign for Foster’s, the rival, and I am told rather more successful, Australian lager. “It’s pure coincidence,” insists a gleeful spokesman, cackling and rubbing his hands.
First in line
In the blue corner: Ellis Watson
A familiar name appears. Ellis Watson is joining the board of FirstGroup, which operates First Great Western, whose 2.31 from Cheltenham to Paddington was 35 minutes late last Thursday, not that I’m biased, you understand. We remember Watson here, when he was News International’s marketing director.
Now he will be marketing and business development director at FirstGroup, which presumably will involve persuading the group’s customers that their services are not 35 minutes late. Watson’s career trajectory since includes John Menzies and Trinity Mirror. But there is a gap.
No mention of his time with Talkcast, a dot-com that once managed to lose £87million on turnover of £933,000, and no, the noughts are not in the wrong place. Why the omission, I ask FirstGroup? To which a spokeswoman deadbats: “I’m sure that all of his career achievements and endeavours have beendiscussed in great detail in the process of interviews.”
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