Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Unsteady Eddie

Today's paper suggests that the Stobart Group has had difficulties leading to a rearrangement of the management team. If this is true, the venture into legal services looks like a classic case of taking your eye off the ball. I don't dabble in shares, but if I did, the barrister wheeze would have been a cue to sell.

5 comments:

  1. It does look like a good call. Well spotted.

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  2. In 'Parkinson's Law' Professor Parkinson reckoned that the writing was on the wall when a company acquired for itself a grand new corporate head office. This was a sign that the end was nigh, and one should sell the shares before it was too late.

    Maybe other 'vanity' projects could be a similar signal.

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  3. Then there's the corporate jet, the flagpole, the Queens Award to Industry Bd the chairman joiningZ do-good committees

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  4. The connection between a haulage company and the legal profession is akin to Royal Mail offering accountancy services.

    Having worked inside many companies at a high level, this sounds like the MD having a sudden bright idea and thinking of what they could do rather than should. Of course the subordinate executives all follow sheeplike lest they see their careers take a nose dive.

    Over the years I have seen so many businesses throw millions at a new venture only for it to fall flat because they did not make use of the grey matter beforehand.

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  5. Clearly one should have no truck with such people.

    Apart from not really thinking that the idea was going to be good for the Bar, i also couldn't really see that it was ever going to work. I am old-fashioned enough to think that people should find their specialism and be really good at it, rather than trying to branch out into various new fields.

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