PEMBROKE : Play can be hard work
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Your support makes all the difference.With bid mania gripping the City, the Olympia toy fair should offer a distracting escape. Not so. Rumour mongers in the world of cuddly toys and action heroes are working overtime.
Talk surrounding a takeover of Bluebird by Mattel, the American giant, continues apace despite company denials. New bankers for the company, new aircraft for the chairman, Torquil Norman, and a promising new little-girls product called Mimi and the Googoos encourage takeover talk.
Ertl, the $200m Hanson-owned Thomas the Tank Engine company, also looks a target. Its flotation was pulled last year despite profits increasing 30 per cent to $10m. Now the company, which scored big Christmas hits with the bizarre bouncing Bumble Ball and the noisy Jibba Jabber, looks even more vulnerable. However, the die-cast tractor division, which forms the core business, does not seem to fit well with the giants Hasbro and Mattel.
The hottest property is the new Space Precinct line of toys sold by Nick Austin's Vivid Imaginations. Mr Austin, formerly of Matchbox, has bought the toy rights to Gerry Anderson's £36m science fiction soap opera, which will burst onto children's screen's in March with its combination of NYPD Blue and Star Wars. Parents may as well start saving up now.
Unclear winner It's nice to see that, despite the upheavals at Great Universal Stores, the aloof retailer, some traditions remain sacrosanct. Recently we have seen the enfranchisement of non-voting shares, a special dividend and fresh non-executive directors as part of a new spirit of glasnost. However, the annual report, for years a fiendishly opaque reflection of trading, continues to win accolades. For the third year running it has won the Company Report award for the worst report of the year, judgedon clarity, chairman's statement and presentation.
One must admire the marketing enthusiasm of Samuel Montagu, the agent selling British Rail's train operating franchises. It has taken tocold-calling potential investors directly.
Virgin, for instance, currently distracted by its involvement in the Channel Tunnel Eurostar bid, was called out of the blue by the bank and then posted details about the process. These arrived on Monday. The company was, needless to say, surprised to read in the papers yesterday that it was actually applying for the pre-qualification process.
"We are doing no more than is normal," said Patricia Hudson, director of Samuel Montagu. Her approach may yield results. Now Virgin has read the documents I am told that, once the Eurostar application is decided, it may apply for one of the franchises.
Yesterday's Chinese New Year celebrations provided an unexpected boom for Martin Davey, chief executive of Cranswick, the tiny quoted food manufacturer, who sold 10 tonnes of Chinese-style spare ribs last month. Rumours on the Yorkshire farm suggest the windfall may help him fund a move sideways into rabbit, hamster and guinea pig food.
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