It surprised me over the past few quarters how, for all of the column inches written about The Apprentice, I didn’t read anyone writing about the fact that you probably wouldn’t want to work for Amstrad as the firm seemed to have lost direction and most of its financials were going in the wrong direction. Apart from me, of course, because I wrote several blogs on the subject (see below). Well Sir Alan has just announced — surprise surprise — that he has sold the firm to BskyB, lock, stock and defunct e-m@ailer.
Here’s the official news release. Here are my blogs ‘predicting’ that the firm would get bought, or at least wondering out loud where its strategy had gone.
It’s worth noting perhaps that the only comment my blog questioning the firm’s poor recent financial performance attracted, was from someone claiming to be a happy shareholder. I emailed that ‘happy shareholder’ with some additional figures that supported my case, only to find that they had used a false email address and so probably don’t exist. Could even have been an Amstrad employee, for all I know. But maybe I’m just being cynical.
I also notice there are more series of The Apprentice planned. Will people compete then to work at a division of BSkyB? I’ve requested comment from Amstrad and will let you know what they say.
