Some people really take the biscuit. How thick-skinned can you be? John Mayo, the former deputy CEO of Marconi who, with CEO Lord George Simpson, turned GEC from an industrial giant into a big fat zero, is now trying to tell Vodafone how to run its business.
Only T Blair and GW Bush have chutzpah on this scale. After what those two have done you'd think no one would put them in charge of a parish council let alone a country and, in Mayo's case, a whelk stall looks challenging.
But here he is writing to Vodafone, on behalf of a group of investors called ECS (Efficient Capital Structures) Assets PPC which owns 0.0004 per cent of Vodafone's shares, suggesting thatVodafone should issue £34bn worth of bonds secured on Vodafone's 45 per cent interest in the US wireless carrier Verizon.
What a really helpful suggestion. Nothing about improving the network, embellishing the services, finding creative uses for broadband or otherwise improving the business. Just adding debt.
It's sad that so many financial people currently seem to think that debt is the answer to everything. Often they're relatively young people who've built nothing, created nothing, contributed nothing. But they're jolly good with numbers.
Maybe they should get out a bit more.
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