It deployed it successfully in winning the Meteor contract to arm the Eurofighter. It played and lost, however, when the Astor airborne battlefield radar contract went to the wrong bidder, Raytheon of the US.Undaunted, BAE has opted for gunboat diplomacy again. The Defence Procurement Agency was warned in no uncertain terms yesterday of the damage that would be done to the UK’s industrial military base if, by some extraordinary error, the carrier contract goes to the French bidder Thales.The new carriers will positively bristle with the latest state-of-the-art hardware including a few squadrons of F35s. But if BAE is not selected, then the two vessels will be platforms for French military knowhow while the UK’s technical prowess will be blunted forever.On this occasion, there is not much to chose between BAE and its French rival. Both bidders would build the ships entirely in the UK and Thales has a list of UK industrial partners every bit as long as BAE’s.In addition, Thales thought it had a deal with the MoD.
When the French entered the UK defence industry by buying up Racal Electronics, they were greeted with open arms by a Government still smarting from BAE’s decision to merge with Marconi. Thales was told it would be viewed as a “second force” in the market and rewarded accordingly. Two years later it is still waiting for payback time and muttering darkly about maybe having to review its entire UK operation The MoD has to blow someone out of the water. But who will it be?Dixons and KingfisherJohn Clare, Dixons chief executive, was playing a straight bat yesterday to questions about whether he will try to snaffle the Darty electricals business in France from Kingfisher.He certainly made some interesting points, though he was careful not to rule anything out.
The world and his wife knows that Dixons would love to get its hands on Darty which is the leading electrical retailer in France, a market in which Dixons is barely represented. Kingfisher’s decision to demerge its electricals division gives the Dixons boys the chance they have been waiting for. Mr Clare has been “keeping an eye on the situation” as he puts it but has so far not made an approach.What is the problem? There are several One is that the deal would be messy for Dixons. Darty is not a standalone business but part of a complex Kingfisher electricals division which includes a lot of rubbish.
There are loss-making businesses in Germany, Holland, Belgium and the Czech Republic. Kingfisher’s UK electricals chain Comet is a decent operation but the competition authorities would never let Dixons keep it.All this is not to say that a deal could not be done. There would probably be a queue of venture capital buyers for Comet and the continental European loss-makers are mostly fairly small.And surely, that old stager Sir Stanley Kalms would like to deliver one final knockout blow to Sir Geoff Mulcahy, the departing Kingfisher chief executive. Sir Stanley retires as Dixons chairman in September though his ghost will linger on as wanders upstairs to the position of “lifetime president emeritus”. And he will retain an office in Dixons London HQ.After the tit-for tat bid battle between Kingfisher and Dixons in the 1980s can Sir Stanley resist one last tilt at his old adversary? Mr Clare sensibly says deals should be done on the basis of shareholder value and not past history and emotion. But when has that ever stopped anyone?jeremy.warner independent.co.uk. Few companies will view the signs of the housing market overheating with as much alarm as does Berkeley, the upmarket housebuilder which specialises in swanky London developments.
