Mr Angry of the cruise world

MICKY Arison is an angry man - and that's unusual for the boss of the world's biggest cruise ship operator, Carnival. After all, it is by making people relaxed and happy that he has become the 36th richest man in America.

His advisers loyally insist that the 52-year-old basketball fanatic from Miami is calm, patient and reasonable. But just a few months of tangling with Britain's quaint old Takeover Panel in his quest to buy rival P&O Princess has done nothing for Arison's blood pressure.

His failure so far to break up the proposed £3.2bn cosy merger between P&O Princess and fellow cruise company Royal Caribbean is clearly getting to him. The Takeover Panel's lack of intervention, combined with a refusal by P&O Princess to speak to him, has left Arison fuming.

Speaking at his Miami headquarters, he accused the Takeover Panel of being in some way anti-foreign. 'The fact is the panel is working in a way that protects the P&O management and the board,' he says. 'They seem to be protecting British interests.'

He is particularly upset about a 'poison pill' clause in the P&O - Royal Caribbean merger that could cost Carnival up to $1bn (£700m) to remove. 'If this whole thing had been taking place in the US, they would not have been able to deal with us in this way.

'For a start, the poison pill would have been swept away and then P&O would have found itself up to its neck in law suits with the board facing action for breaches of fiduciary duties.'

Arison can do nothing but brood about the lack of intervention by the Takeover Panel. Unless, of course, he can persuade P&O Princess shareholders to stage a revolt and vote to defer their crucial meeting on 14 February until the regulators have made up their mind on the merger.

Of course, he could raise his bid again - P&O Princess has rejected his latest offer worth £3.5bn - but he seems strangely resigned to the fact that even a higher bid would not persuade P&O to talk to him. 'Anything is open to us,' he says, 'but one thing I am sure of is that whatever we do, including raising the offer, P&O will not talk to us. We always said it was a long shot and it remains a long shot. All we want to do is to talk to P&O.'

And not being loved by P&O clearly rankles with Arison. He spent two-and-a-half years cultivating Lord Sterling, chairman of P&O Princess, only to be told the company was not for sale. And then came the Royal Caribbean merger and the poison pill.

All that aside, Arison's relentless pursuit of P&O begs a fundamental question. Why does the owner of the biggest cruise operator in the world, with 43 ships carrying 3.1m passengers around the globe, want to become even bigger?

To ask that question is once again to press the Mr Angry button. 'Size, size, why does everyone go on about size?' he splutters. 'It's got nothing to do with size. It's all to do with what you can deliver in terms of price and yield. When I took over Carnival in 1979, it had sales of $44m and profits of $12m. That ratio has not changed, even though we are much bigger. The fact is that we are better brand managers than anybody else, and certainly better than P&O.'

Most industry observers and analysts would agree with that. Arison has a hands-on style of management and his employees are encouraged to call him Micky. He also has a keen eye for cost savings. One friend said of him: 'You could lose your job for mislaying a paper clip - and you could be sure that it was Micky who was counting the clips.'

Friends and close colleagues inevitably say that he is calm, fun, and charming, while critics say he is shrewd, but domineering. Certainly, he uses his considerable power and influence to make sure that little is known about him.

Intensely private and worried about security, Arison refuses to talk about anything other than business.

One thing is clear - he does not like to lose. If he does, he becomes very angry. When Miami Heat lost to rivals New York Knicks last May, he vented his fury on the game's officials. The price for his outburst was a $25,000 fine.

P&O Princess has already felt Arison's anger, but has tried its lofty best to ignore him. Whether it can continue to resist his voluble overtures for much longer seems unlikely.