There is a certain type of animal lover who believes that pets assume the traits of their owners. Disappointingly, a similarly rigorous scientific study has never been expanded to the City, where research into whether companies take on the characteristics of their chief executives might prove worthwhile.
Take the old mutt Marks & Spencer, which will report numbers this week. It is being run by Marc Bolland, a man known in the City for two mannerisms.
First is Bolland’s tendency to communicate using such woeful cliches (admittedly in a second language) that the City has abandoned attempting a meaningful translation. And second, the dapper Dutchman has a reputation for compulsively checking on the status of his coiffure, a habit which has caused the odd scheduling issue and left him with the nickname of “five minutes late”.
Which brings us back to Marks and its continuingly troublesome online business, where different computer systems, speaking different languages, are struggling to interact in the retailer’s new warehouse.
So if you order some shoes (which, as they come in a box, are processed by one system) as well as a dress (on a hanger, so obviously a different system), the instructions may get garbled, meaning the order doesn’t quite get out of the door on time.
So nothing like the boss, then.
Wobbles at Kingfisher
This page has long campaigned for Kingfisher, the owner of DIY retailer B&Q, to be recognised for its achievement of inflicting more misery on its customers than almost any other company in the UK (and this is a crowded field).
What other business allows its clients to set out with lofty intentions of sacrificing a bank holiday in order to improve their family’s surroundings, only to be routinely left either (a) humiliated by their efforts, (b) on the end of a rollicking from their spouse or, (c) in casualty?
So we can be forgiven a certain amount of schadenfreude when something constructed by Kingfisher looks like falling down, as its €275m acquisition of French DIY chain Mr Bricolage threatened to do last week. The deal is now wobbling like a cheap shelving unit after the Bricolage board and its biggest shareholder voiced reservations about the proposed deal.
All of which is bound to attract some comment this week when Kingfisher’s newish chief executive, Véronique Laury, sets out her strategy and reveals how the group has assembled its full-year results. Meanwhile, Kingfisher concedes that it’s considering all of its options on Bricolage – or, in other words, wondering how it might paper over a few cracks.
Asos doing it by the numbers
One of the oft-stated criticisms of online clothing retailer Asos is that there is too much choice. The grumble is usually uttered by its shoppers, but investors might now justifiably moan along the same lines: after all, you can find a City analyst who says the internet retailer is worth about £3.3bn, then another who reckons its value should be £1.8bn – which presumably means at least one of them hasn’t got a clue what they’re talking about.
Still, a City analyst being clueless is hardly news. What makes this noteworthy is that, as a group, they tend to believe independent thought is like wearing non-khaki chinos to the office on a Friday.
On results conference calls, you usually get 20 of them using different words to ask an identical question – ie, “is the number I have in this cell of my spreadsheet about right?” – and then they all pootle off to come up with broadly similar valuations.
Still, that may make the Asos results day this week more entertaining than most, as one person on the call seems to be convinced Asos’s shares are toppy: his name is Nick Robertson, the group’s founder and boss, and he sold £20m worth in January.
