Telephone Rentals Plc may well end up in the Cable & Wireless Plc camp, but it has no intention of going quietly: Cables mailed its formal offer document to shareholders over the weekend, inter alia criticising Rentals’ five-year record, citing declining operating margins, flat earnings per share and a fall in dividend cover, to be met with a stinging This kind of comment shows that they do not understand our business from Rentals chairman Sir Charles Ball: he explains that the decline in margins resulted from a switch towards direct sales from rental following liberalisation of the telecommunications equipment market, and that the reason earnings per share were flat was the change in the tax system that phased out capital allowances during the five-year period.
