GEC Plc was as inscrutable as ever at its annual meeting last Friday, but the Daily Mail City pages, which can still teach their more exalted brethren a thing or two about lively financial journalism, got more out of the meeting than most, and picked up hints of some radical changes on the way at the company. Michael Walters went along, reporting that you have to move fast to catch Lord Weinstock, the company’s managing director. He lost little time leaving the ballroom of London’s Hilton after the meeting, says Walters. A couple of corridors later I caught up. Before I had time to ask him if he really has plans for his son Simon to succeed him… he rapped ‘I’m not talking to you.’ Then he disappeared. Simon was not quite so quick on his feet. Did he see himself as a future managing director of GEC? ‘I’m not going to answer that.’ He refused to say whether he was a candidate, adding when asked if he’d like the job that it was a matter for the board when my father decides to retire. Lord Prior, who has had a political lifetime’s experience of answering tricky questions, was a little more voluble, suggesting that Lord Weinstock, 67, would remain in the top job for another couple of years and that the succession was not presently being considered, adding that in talks with large investors in the company, the question had not even been raised. The problem, as Walters points out, is that the share price, 163 pence in 1981, rose to a peak of 249 pence in 1982, and has been no higher that 254 pence (briefly, in 1987) since, and that on Friday it closed at 199 pence. And that is despite a substantial part of the cash mountain being spent on buying Plessey Co and on taking GEC into joint ventures with continental and US giants. The suggestion is that the company is now ready to start selling many of its smaller, peripheral businesses to become more sharply focussed and improve earnings per share. One question that hasn’t been raised, but could be back on the agenda, is that of demerging the Marconi electronics business, something that was in the plan in the early 1980s, but was finally abandoned.
