Pride and Avarice Page 4

  Miles directed his next remark to Michael Pendleton, while still addressing the whole table. ‘It was a particularly challenging slogan to get right, actually, which is why I insisted we research it exhaustively in all the regions. It was essential to have every word perfect.’

  Peter thought of the endless, pointless focus groups and debriefing sessions he’d attended, none of which Miles had come along to, in which they’d debated ad nauseam whether the word ‘just’, as in ‘making every day just a little more special’, should be included or not, or whether, as an alternative, the words ‘for you’ should be added on the end—‘Making every day a little more special for you.’ The Pendletons marketing team favoured the ‘for you’ option, arguing that it personalised the proposition, while incorporating a call to action, placing the emphasis on you—the all important shopper. But forty focus groups from Newcastle to Bristol, conducted with loyal and occasional Pendletons customers, declared otherwise, so the decision was made. Peter felt a wave of depression, remembering the days he’d squandered criss-crossing Britain with the Strakers research department, tuning in to the arbitrary opinions of people who really didn’t give a toss either way.

  Lord Pendleton joined the meeting, which meant it could now begin in earnest. The eldest of the four brothers, he was the group’s Chairman who had driven the rush for growth, transforming Pendletons from a high-class family grocer with fifteen shops to the nationwide behemoth it had become today. Remorseless expansion through acquisition and store openings had put a Pendletons in virtually every high street and retail park in the country. Miles knew it was James he had to win over today, if his scheme was to stand a prayer.

  As Miles predicted, there was nothing on the agenda to detain anyone for long, and in well under an hour they reached Any Other Business. People were already zipping away their notes and laptops when Miles spoke. ‘Chairman, if I may, there is one thought I wanted to raise under this item. A potential small acquisition which might just merit having someone take a look at.’ Miles’s delivery was intentionally nonchalant, almost disengaged. Nobody around the table could have had the slightest idea how important this was to him. ‘I don’t know how familiar you are with a frozen-foods group based in the West Midlands, Freeza Mart? Not one of the more exciting sectors at the moment, I agree, but quite an interesting small business nonetheless with definite growth potential if professionally managed, which I understand it isn’t at present. I thought it might be a good fit for the group, either rebranded as Pendletons Freeza Centres in competition with Iceland or merged into the parent brand.’

  Lord Pendleton of Longparish asked several pertinent questions about the performance and status of Freeza Mart, all of which Miles was well-briefed to answer, and then Michael Pendleton and his logistics director, Colin Terry, had their own questions about warehousing and distribution hubs.

  ‘The central point about Freeza Mart,’ Miles declared, ‘is that it’s not a well-managed business. The founding partner has taken it to a certain level, but he’s way beyond his comfort zone now. They’re crying out for professional management, and I know his external investors feel the same. The institutions are sceptical about recent expansion ambitions, which they consider unsound. Now would be the perfect moment to strike. But you’ll need to move quickly. I hear Wal-Mart’s already sniffing about.’

  Miles surveyed the table, knowing it was the moment critique. If James decided to pass, then the dreaded Clegg mansion would surely get built and Chawbury valley would be spoiled forever. For three months, the bat, newt and wild flower police had occupied Silas’s cottage, cordoning off the hamlet with yellow exclusion tape, but all their bossy efforts had failed to uncover a solitary cudweed, spearwort, bat or salamander, and investigations would shortly be suspended. Miles’s last hope lay in persuading the Pendletons to buy Ross’s business and chuck him out, terminating his expansion plans and the Clegg mansion in one brilliant stroke. If Pendletons took over Freeza Mart, Ross wouldn’t need a house down south and could go straight back to Droitwich with his tail between his legs.

  He was passing his gaze from brother to brother, alert for signals, when he caught sight of Peter, staring darkly at him. He had an accusatory expression, as though he’d sussed out his father’s plan, and objected on moral grounds. Miles grunted crossly. He found his eldest son exasperating. He appeared to inhabit some parallel world of his own, utterly removed from real life, in which the normal human emotions of cunning, graft and a desire to better oneself played no part at all. He would gladly let him leave Strakers if he thought he had any prospect of finding a job anywhere else. Apart from strumming on an acoustic guitar, Miles couldn’t think of anything Peter enjoyed doing at all. The idea of Peter having scruples about his plan infuriated him. For heaven’s sake, did he care nothing for Chawbury? Did he have no idea what effort and expense it took, year after year, to maintain the house and garden for the greater glory of the Straker family? Miles glanced over at James’s son, Hugh, a nicely presented young man with an intelligent air about him, and wished Peter was more like him.

  ‘My vote goes in favour of pursuing the opportunity,’ Lord Pendleton said at last. ‘We should do our homework and take it to the next stage, at least. My only reservation is the inevitable one: will we get clearance from the MMC to swallow another competitor? After the hurdles we faced last time, and the prevailing sentiment about monopolies generally, we have to expect a lot of opposition. Miles, this is your area. Is it realistic?’

  Miles replied carefully. ‘As ever, James, you’ve gone straight to the heart of the matter. And you’re right to be cautious, because we’re going to need to handle this one very skilfully. But I do think it’s doable, yes. It’s just a question of presenting everything in the right way. Why not leave it to me, and we’ll see what we come up with?’

  It was Miles’s point of pride that Straker Communications charged more for their services than any comparable communications agency. This was because, as he explained it, ‘we provide the complete package—public relations expertise, lobbying, corporate image enhancement and adjustment, high-level access plus, of course, my personal intervention as required.’ Within a few hours of the strategic meeting at Pendletons, Miles appointed a working party to develop media strategy for a hostile takeover of Freeza Mart, and an operations room was set-up at Straker Communications’ headquarters in Golden Square. Miles did not, himself, attend any of the subsequent sessions to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the target. Instead, he did what Miles did best, which was to lunch a succession of investors, newspaper editors, business editors and politicians, anyone in fact who might be asked for their opinion on the takeover, and subtly remind them what an impressive, philanthropic, forward-thinking group Pendletons was, and how we must never reach a point in this country where entre-preneurship becomes stifled by business-phobic legislation and red tape. To a couple of the city editors from the most important Sunday newspapers, Miles casually predicted further consolidation in the grocery sector. ‘There are still a few struggling independents, mostly rather poorly run, which I can’t see surviving in current form. They’ll have to line up with one of the big boys.’ All of these lunches took place at the same table at Mark’s Club in Charles Street beneath an oil painting of a King Charles spaniel, which was known to the staff as ‘Mr Straker’s table’ since he ate at it three times a week. One of the reasons Miles had chosen his office in Charles Mews South was its proximity to Mark’s Club, and the many potential clients among the high-powered membership of the private dining club.

  It was exactly five weeks after Miles embarked upon his softening-up campaign that Pendletons formally approached the Clegg board to take them over. As predicted, Ross duly rejected the offer, and shortly afterwards the approach went hostile. Pendletons plc wrote to all Clegg shareholders offering a premium of 70 pence per share on the price. With Miles’s skilful prompting, this was publicly welcomed by several of the larger institutions, and the business sections were
suddenly filled with laudatory profiles of Pendletons.

  Sitting at home in Droitwich, with the Sunday papers spread out on the pine kitchen table, Ross felt sickened as the tsunami of positive press for Pendletons swept over him. The Independent-on-Sunday carried a double-page analysis of the rise and rise of the Pendletons brand, full of graphs and graphics illustrating its immutable progress, and the Sunday Telegraph business section carried a rare interview with James Pendleton, pictured rather stiffly at his desk with a Calder mobile behind him.

  ‘Reading what it says here, love,’ Ross said to Dawn, ‘you’d think it was a done deal already. They’re writing about us like we’re history. We’re like a minnow with this bloody great carp.’

  Dawn tried to console him. ‘I’m sure that won’t happen, Ross. All your investors know what a brilliant job you’ve done starting up the business. And you’re doing so well, opening all these new stores. They’re not just going to sell out.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ Ross replied wearily. ‘If the deal makes sense, they’ll sell us in ten seconds flat. It’s business. You’ve got to be realistic.’ Then he said, ‘But I’ll still be bloody gutted if it does happen. And I’m not going down without a fight either, I can tell you that.’

  It was more than twenty years since Ross had opened his first shop, followed by a second and then, more rapidly, by a further four. After that, he’d kept on expanding, leasing new sites, keeping tight control on overhead and costs. He was also a shrewd picker of staff and a good motivator. One of his boasts was that he seldom, if ever, lost senior managers to competitors. And he was obsessed by efficiencies, forever imposing tougher KPI’s—key performance indicators—onto the business, and introducing new training programmes. He often said that the potential for Freeza Mart was exponential. ‘In five to ten years we’ll have upwards of a hundred shops, we’ve barely scratched the surface yet.’ And now, thanks to Pendletons, he risked losing the lot.

  At that moment, the two youngest Clegg children, Gemma and Debbie, came into the kitchen, asking if someone could drive them to Kingfisher retail park to go shopping. ‘I really need to go to Top-shop and Miss Selfridge,’ Gemma said. At sixteen, she was short and pretty, with a mousey bob and freckles, black micro-skirt and red plastic boots. She wandered over to the fridge, took out a raspberry yoghurt and leant against the pine counter to eat it. On the white melamine cupboard doors were blu-tacked school photographs of the girls in their brown cardboard frames.

  Ross looked up from the newspapers. ‘Are you wearing lipstick, young lady?’

  Gemma’s hand shot up to cover her mouth. ‘Not really, dad. We were just trying something.’

  ‘You can wash it off right now, go on, over at the sink there. You’re still too young to be painting yourself with cosmetics.’

  ‘Dad, I’m going to be seventeen in a month. Everyone at school’s allowed to wear it at weekends.’

  ‘Well, not in this family you’re not.’

  ‘Mum wears make-up all the time. Even when she goes swimming, she puts it on.’

  ‘Now don’t be silly, Gemma,’ said Dawn weakly.

  ‘Yes you do, mum. Admit it. When we went to the leisure centre, you were putting on lipstick in the car. And mascara.’

  Dawn laughed nervously. ‘I wasn’t applying it, I was repairing it. Anyway, don’t answer your father back, you’re getting very lippy, Gemma, I don’t like it.’ Then she said, ‘Give us a few minutes, love, and I’ll run you down to the mall. I’m just talking to your father about something important. Run along now, I won’t be long. And put some trousers on, I’m not taking you out looking like that, not in that skirt.’

  Gemma groaned. ‘I’ll bet there won’t even be any good shops if we move to Hampshire. There won’t be anything to do.’

  Debbie, aged fifteen, nodded her agreement. ‘Yeah, Gemma says they don’t have Topshops or New Looks or anything, not even pizzas, in Hampshire or wherever. She says it’s going to be so boring.’

  ‘Of course they do,’ Dawn replied. ‘Really, you girls can be very silly sometimes. Anyway, Debbie, you don’t even like shopping, you’re always saying that. And you can have a pony in Hampshire, which you can’t here. Now, run along both of you. I’m talking to your dad.’

  After they’d gone, Ross said, ‘Well, there’s someone who’ll be happy if we get taken over.’ He laughed. ‘Gemma and her ruddy Topshop.’

  Dawn kissed the top of his head. ‘We’re not going to get taken over. No way is that going to happen. You haven’t spent the last twenty years working your guts out to have it taken from you. You’re a fighter, Ross Clegg. Remember when we were just starting out, and that first little office behind Budgeons?’

  ‘I liked that office,’ Ross replied, pecking her on the cheek. ‘Nice and cosy. Just the four of us in the one room, and you practically sitting on my lap.’

  ‘I was only about five years older then than Gemma is now. That’s a funny thought.’

  ‘The sexiest secretary in Droitwich. Remember the red platform boots? I wonder whatever became of them?’

  ‘Since you ask, Gemma’s wearing them right now.’ And they both roared with laughter.

  Ross pushed away the newspapers and stood up. ‘Tell you what, if you’re running the girls to the shops, could you drop me at the gym on the way? I feel like working off a lot of aggression.’

  ‘You do that,’ said Dawn. ‘And remember: you fight them, love. It’s your company, you started it. No way can Pendletons barge their way in and take it. I’m telling all my friends to boycott their supermarkets, starting tomorrow. I’m going to call them all up and tell them.’

  Ross chuckled and patted her bottom. ‘You do that, girl. It won’t make a blind bit of difference, but it might make us all feel a bit better.’

  5.

  Pendletons’s decision to raise their offer for Cleggs by a further thirty pence was greeted by the press, carefully primed by Miles, as the knockout bid. ‘A premium of a pound over the original share price surely reflects full value and more,’ wrote The Times. ‘If Lord Pendleton paid any more for this Droitwich-based cash-and-carry enterprise, he’d have to forgo his expensive Lucian Freud habit for a week or two.’

  ‘I think the job’s as good as done,’ Miles reported on the telephone to James Pendleton. ‘We’ve pretty much covered all bases now, and there hasn’t been a single voice anywhere for Cleggs side. Not one. You probably saw The Economist this morning.’ The Economist had published, in that week’s edition, a lengthy analysis of the European supermarket sector, in which Carrefour of France, Tesco and Pendletons of Britain and Auchan in Belgium had been named the four groups to watch. The article referred approvingly to the impending takeover of Freeza Mart.

  ‘And there’s an article coming out in Friday’s Evening Standard Business section I think you might enjoy,’ Miles added. ‘Nice reading for us, I predict, but not for Ross Clegg.’ Miles purred smugly. Some of the unattributable lines he’d fed to the journalist were witheringly rude.

  That evening, for the first time in a long while, Miles gave Peter a lift home to Holland Park Square in his office car. Normally Peter found his own way on the tube, but tonight Davina wanted her son back on time for a family dinner, so Miles sent Makepiece over to Golden Square to pick him up and then swing back via Charles Mews South to collect the Chairman. Having asked his son rather cursorily how his day had been, Miles turned to his briefcase and a stash of reports.

  As they rounded Marble Arch, Peter said, ‘Dad, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.’

  Miles reluctantly put down his papers. ‘What’s that, Peter?’

  ‘About Pendletons and the Freeza Mart takeover thing and all that.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are we really only doing it to stop Ross Clegg building his house where Silas’s cottage was?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Miles replied firmly. ‘We’re doing it because it makes sound business logic. Pendletons are seeking ways to expand
through acquisition, which they’ve frequently done in the past so it’s nothing new, and the Clegg properties fit that strategy. Our job is to assist the process, make sure it happens as smoothly as possible.’

  ‘But, admit it dad, you never would have suggested it if it wasn’t for the cottage. You hadn’t even heard of Freeza Mart before Ross bought it. All this is just to stop him spoiling the view.’

  ‘Total nonsense,’ Miles said. ‘You’re right Clegg first came onto my radar when he turned up on our doorstep, but that’s how business works. You spot an opportunity and seize it. It’s not personal. It isn’t about me, or about him for that matter. It’s about helping Pendletons grow market share in a very competitive sector, by any means we can.’

  Peter looked sceptical, which made Miles bristle. Objectively, he could see that his son was good-looking, even handsome, with his long face and floppy brown hair like a rock star. And Miles could appreciate his idealism too, in theory. Miles felt himself to be an idealist, working hard every day of his life to make everything around him more ideal. He wanted his company to be the ideal solution for every client; he wanted his house—his houses—to be ideally and enviably comfortable; he wanted his holidays to be ideal, taken in ideal places; and most of all he wanted his wife and children to be ideal, to be seen to be ideal, actually to be ideal. But the idealism of Peter was something else altogether, something disapproving and uncompromising, which introduced a nagging ethical dimension where none was required. Although Miles knew in his heart that Peter had a point, and the takeover had been entirely provoked by Ross’s monstrous house plans, he had already rewritten history until Pendletons’s expansion programme was the spur, the house merely a happy consequence.

  So he said, ‘Peter, if I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s this: you make your own luck. Nobody comes along with a big basket of goodies and doles them out, with identical shares for every child in the playground. Things don’t work that way. So if you want to take the opportunities life presents you with, I recommend you don’t search for the negative in every situation. As for this Clegg business, I’d be grateful if you didn’t refer to the cottage like that ever again.’