UFO Info Week-End

We used to run the world before you

We used to run the world before you.”Afterwards, he added: “It’s absolutely fantastic – a highlight of my career.”Here I am, this fat bloke from Reading sharing a room with Jack Nicholson, Bill Murray and Michael Douglas. Ricky Gervais, star of the hit BBC series The Office, said yesterday that he is planning a new life as an international celebrity after the British comedy show won two Golden Globe awards in Hollywood.
Gervais, who wrote the series and starred in it, said he planned to be “a little bit more arrogant and lazy, possibly send people out for pizzas that I probably wouldn’t have had before. While that is true, SMG’s case seems to be fairly extreme, with the acquisition of the SRH stake, at the top of the market three years ago, seen in the City as a particularly unnecessary gamble.Whoever is chosen as the new chairman (Michael Grade, a board member and former chief executive of Channel 4, is a possibility) will have to work some major charm in the City. The new chairman will also have to take a close look at Mr Flanagan’s record.The good news is that, should SMG decide to sell up, ready buyers would emerge for most of its assets Virgin Radio’s figures have stabilised Talks with ITV have taken place in the past.

Pearl & Dean has 40 per cent of the cinema advertising market in this country, while the billboard business could be easily swallowed up.If SMG has an alternative to this break-up scenario, it had better start showing it.. They need to keep their heads down and let advertising improve,” says Mr Menzies-Gow.SMG’s defence is that every media company got carried away in the boom times and bought assets at inflated prices. And anyway, it will take a long time before the City will trust the company to do deals again.”The best value for shareholders is for SMG to sell more businesses, though not straight away. And, with the SRH interest, went a strategically significant position in the approaching radio consolidation game. The company is accused of missing out on becoming a major player in ITV and it is difficult to see how it will emerge as a sizeable radio operator.Even after the SRH deal, SMG’s debt is, at some £160m, still high and would not allow for major acquisitions.

It decided to sell its publishing business after failing to get a high enough offer for its ITV franchises.By this year, debt was weighing heavily on the company again. It sold the SRH stake for £60m less than the acquisition price this month, not waiting for a bounce-back in the radio sector’s revenues. Debt ruled what strategy it adopted.” The £216m disposal of the Glasgow Herald newspaper was forced on the group by extreme balance sheet pressure. What many in the Square Mile find particularly troublesome is that SMG has never really acknowledged its mistakes and, very unconvincingly, tries to portray its reaction to events as a long-term strategy.Richard Menzies-Gow, an analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, said: “SMG has not had a coherent strategy for 18 months. The time is right, after almost five years as chairman, to hand the job over.”In many ways, things are looking up for SMG. The £90.5m sale of its stake in SRH has relieved pressure on the balance sheet and the company can now “reduce our debt and move on”, as Mr Flanagan put it on announcing this transaction.

And the media industry is starting to see signs of a recovery in advertising revenues after a three-year downturn. SMG is particularly highly geared to a rebound – every additional pound of revenues is translated into 80p of additional profit.The group’s remaining businesses have good positions, which are desirable to predators in a break-up scenario. But SMG maintains that its cross-media strategy remains in place and that its assets work as standalone business in their sectors.But SMG will find that the City has not forgiven or forgotten. Mr Flanagan remains in place.SMG would only say yesterday that Mr Cruickshank had decided to concentrate on his new job – chairing the publishing group Taylor & Francis – and would step down in the summer.Callum Spreng, SMG’s corporate affairs director, said: “Don Cruickshank has seen us through some pretty major legislative changes… But what we ended up with was good assets but no critical mass in any one media market and a lack of clarity about its end-game.City sources say disgruntled shareholders went to see Mr Cruickshank.