Here comes the CBI, turning up the volume on the benefits of EU membership, just as Sir Mike Rake urged all businesses to do in his farewell address as president in May. But there are two problems with Tuesday’s lobbying document, which carries a carefully worded subtitle: “Why the European Union is good for business, but how it should be better.”
Problem number one is: what if the EU doesn’t get better for business, and what if David Cameron’s renegotiation achieves nothing? Would the CBI still say it’s better to remain in the tent?
For now, the CBI’s position is that it wants to stay in a reformed EU and, after a slapdown from the business secretary, Sajid Javid, it is studiously avoiding the issue of how it would regard an unreformed union. But the latter is the interesting business question.
One strongly suspects the CBI is a stayer in all circumstances (that was the tone of Rake’s speech) but, until it is prepared to defend that position openly, these lobbying documents will feel limp.
The second problem is that the CBI’s confident statements about “what business thinks” rest on an opinion poll taken in 2013. How about asking the members, in late 2015, how they feel about both a reformed and unreformed EU? If the answers differ, that would be worth knowing.
Mark Price would make a good chairman at Channel 4
A month is a long time in the grocery trade. It was only a few weeks ago that Mark Price was telling the Evening Standard that wild horses would not tear him away from Waitrose. He’d had a few job offers over the years but “my commitment to Waitrose, to the team here, to John Lewis, always wins out”.
Now a job vacancy at Channel 4 – as opposed to an actual offer – has prompted a rethink. He’s off to enter the contest to be chairman of the broadcaster and, since he is already deputy chairman, will start as strong favourite. Fair enough, but this probably wasn’t a decision taken on a whim. Why do the undying loyalty routine?
Never mind. Price has played a terrific innings at Waitrose, a business that a decade ago was not guaranteed to prosper. The bet at the time was that bigger supermarket beasts, especially Tesco, would steal its customers with their upmarket Finest ranges and the like.
The plot developed differently, for both companies. Waitrose has doubled its number of stores since 2007 and taken the fight to the opposition – its Essential basics range now accounting for £1bn of a £6.5bn of annual turnover, took Waitrose into the mainstream. Few call it a niche player these days.
It would be harder to achieve a similar transformation at Channel 4, whatever its future ownership. But Price, the “chubby grocer” as he calls himself, is a rounded individual in the other sense. He would be a good choice as chairman.
Whitbread boss departs on a good note
Andy Harrison inherited a strong business at Whitbread five years ago and will leave the company in December in the same condition. That’s the main requirement of all chief executives, and a 14% rise in half-year profits to £291m is a good note on which to depart. Costa Coffee has continued to outmuscle Starbucks in the UK and has expanded rapidly in China. Premier Inn has raced away from its main domestic rival, debt-constrained Travelodge.
It is easy now to forget that, on arrival, Harrison was being lobbied in some quarters of the City to chop Whitbread in two. The demerger idea didn’t make commercial sense because, at the time, Premier Inn’s stable cashflows were funding the Costa roll-out. That didn’t stop the fee-hungry investment bankers promoting the idea, of course.
Harrison, wisely, squashed the chatter at the early stage. So should his successor, Alison Brittain. These days, Costa is big enough to stand on its own feet but cohabitation seems to work for Whitbread. Stick with the formula.
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