Sports Calendar

These are not natural global markets, where European companies might be swamped by non-EU invaders through honest competition. It is about which companies are to grow by cross-border acquisitions. The term “European champions” is code aimed by big EU states at smaller nations that unthinkingly try to protect their companies, particularly natural monopolies, from “foreign” takeover.

Plenty of European companies able to compete globally have emerged by their own commercial efforts, including Shell, Glaxo, Siemens, Vodafone and, in supermarkets, both Tesco and France’s Carrefour. Designating champions was exposed as a sham when Alstom sank for the second time and Siemens was not allowed to buy it. The French State refinanced Alstom, insisting that it was a national champion and any European champion must be just as much French as German.

The EU (including Britain), should celebrate companies that succeed by competition and good management and encourage them by keeping out their way. It should not seek to determine who owns whom.

Shop affront

HMV has spent most of the past year with corporate financiers. The record shop and Waterstone’s book chain intervened in a bid auction for rival Ottakar’s, only to have its bid stalled by the Competition Commission. HMV then rebuffed a bid led by Permira, the private equity house, at a depressed price. And then Tim Waterstone, founder and former owner of the book chain, had a tilt. He has not got very far but it meant HMV had to spend even more time with the corporate financiers.

These putative deals used up valuable management time but they also illustrated how the traditional book and record shops are being squeezed. On one side Amazon offers fast delivery of millions of titles to your door; from the other side, supermarkets offer smaller ranges at low prices.

If this traditional form of book and music retailing is to prosper, however, and HMV is to reverse a 5.7 per cent fall in like-for-like sales in the year just ended, more basic commercial initiatives are needed. The group needs careful planning to deliver more price cuts while keeping its special status as a “destination” retailer, offering atmosphere, perhaps comfort and a stock to explore.

Ending the agreement with Amazon to run Waterstone’s website is an essential first step. The web-offering from HMV had become no more than Amazon with a Waterstone label but should be a tool for HMV to extend its ability to present a clearly distinctive retail product.

The contracting-out of back office functions can make sense. Contracting out the shopfront does not.

HAROLD WILSON must be spinning in his grave. After 103 years, the Birmingham factory making HP Sauce, which the former PM dolloped on everything, is closing with production shifting to Elst, in the Netherlands. Heinz, which bought the brand a year ago, says it is uneconomic to keep the factory open and about 125 jobs will be lost. It’s a bitter pill to swallow but there is a consolation. That other great British condiment, Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce, has to date been made in Birmingham. Now it will return to Worcester.

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