Vue and Melrose are upbeat but the recovery from Covid is patchy at best

That’s if the bosses of Vue and Melrose are anything to go by.

Having both been shut down for months, sales now appear to be bouncing back strongly.

For Melrose, that’s because Americans are buying cars again.

For Vue, because film fans have been desperate to see Christopher Nolan’s latest mindbender, Tenet.

Melrose says it’s time markets showed more greed, less fear. It has high hopes of finding a big spending buyer for its Nortek ventilation business.

Vue claims 2021 will be a bumper year. It is thinking about a flotation soon after.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Any recovery will be patchy in the extreme.

Melrose itself shows dire results in aerospace, even as automotive and air conditioning rallies.

Conservatively-run Vue should bounce back but rivals are struggling under huge debts.

Odeon and UCI owner AMC went into the crisis with $5 billion of debt — six times its earnings.

Bankers say it recently tried to sell its Nordic division but at unrealistic prices and this week it flogged its Baltic theatres. City dealmakers wonder if the Odeon and UCI chains could be next.

Cineworld, which backed out of a $2 billion takeover of Canada’s Cineplex giant over summer, has now seen Chinese millionaire Liu Zaiwang buy a 5% stake.

Will he take it private and bag himself a knockdown deal of the decade?

As summer ends, the Covid crisis is entering a new phase for business.

After months of retrenchment, deals are being worked on in every sector.

In some, the greedy will win, and win big. In others, it’s still right to be fearful, whatever Melrose says.