M&S: Doubts whether Green is serious

FOR a man who can talk the hind legs off a donkey and is a billionaire to boot, Philip Green is displaying a marked reluctance to put his money where his mouth is.

He wants Marks & Spencer but only if the board agrees to let him have it. Fat chance, judging by the numbers he's come up with.

To win them over rather than to stick with Stuart Rose and Charles Wilson, the newly installed drivers of M&S, he has to do better than this.

The City wants more cash, upfront, and less of the 'stub equity' in his bid vehicle. An offer - or to quote him exactly, a 'possible offer', such are the conditions he's attaching - of between 290 and 310p per share isn't enough and falls a long way short of delivering a knockout blow.

The City faces a choice: stay with the new team or go with Green. Investors will get a cheque for backing Green but then what are they left with? Shares in a M&S run by someone whose loathing of running public companies is famous; who has not endeared himself to the City and who likes to be his own man, period.

Green is making a lot of play of items about which he requires further and better particulars before making a firm bid. Details of the past six weeks' trading will be useful, but are not vital to the future of Britain's biggest clothing retailer.

He won't admit it but the wind was taken right out of Green by Rose's appointment. Without that M&S was there for the taking. Now, things look very different. As Green says, 'there can be no certainty that any offer will ultimately be made'.

Based on the evidence today, there is no certainty at all, that Green will win.

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