time on the golf course than they did in the office.
The main factory was run-down and nothing short of demolition would put it right, and customers were vanishing as the big supermarket chains pushed north of the border. Young's once had a healthy stack of gilts and for a long time the interest from them had boosted profits, but they had gradually been sold to pay off borrowings and the firm was now sinking deeper and deeper into debt.
It did have one worthwhile asset, though, and it was more than enough to keep the vultures hovering. Young's had a Stock Exchange listing, and I was approached by an upand-coming grocery chain which wanted to go public but which didn't want the expense or the trouble of going to the market on its own.
My brief was to arrange a mutually beneficial takeover, an agreed bid that would give my client the prestige of a public company - and access to City fund raising - and give the Young's family the chance of taking the money and running. Or more likely driving away in the BMWs. Easy enough, you'd think, and normally it would have been but in this case I'd reckoned without Tony Walker.
He'd spotted the potential of Young's as a shell company all the way from London and had managed to buy up about three per cent of the shares in the market for �72,000. He'd then persuaded one of the older directors to sell him his stake for cash and that took Tony's holding to twelve per cent, and then he started putting pressure on for a seat on the board.
Tony had started professional life as an accountant, but soon realized he could do a lot better by running companies himself instead of just looking after their books. He'd borrowed something like a quarter of a million pounds from his father, a retired farmer, and started buying strategic stakes in companies ripe for takeover.
It was a bit like betting on racehorses, but more often 53 than not the favourite romped home and the winnings piled up. Then he came to the conclusion that he could do even better if he took part in the race himself, buying shares in companies and then negotiating for them to be taken over, more often than not from a position of authority within the firm. He usually made a double profit, a healthy manage- ment fee from the company and a boost to the value of his shareholding, which he would sell soon after the bid went through.
He was doing the same at Young's and had just got his seat on the board and had a West Midlands electronics company all ready to reverse into it when I came onto the scene. By then the share price was already on the way up, partly because the market was well aware of Walker's reputation and also because you can't do anything in this business without making ripples and the brokers knew there was a battle in the offing. My only chance was to put together an agreed bid, a package that all the directors would accept and recommend to the rest of the shareholders.
My tack was to appeal to their chauvinism and play on the Scottish roots of my client, 'Wouldn't it be a terrible shame to let this proud Scottish name be taken over by a crowd of heathen Sassenachs, remember Culloden', and so on. My pleas fell on deaf ears and glazed eyes while Tony was out wining and dining the sixty-eight-year-old matriarch of the Young's clan and playing golf with the rest of the board at a level well below his seven handicap.
I was fighting an uphill battle and the City watchers of the Clasgow Herald and Scotsman had just about given up on me when I decided to take Shona for a meal in one of Edinburgh's plusher restaurants.
We'd planned to overhaul our strategy in a bid to snatch victory from the jaws of this wide-mouthed London predator, but as it turned out we saw Tony Walker shoving smoked salmon and shrimps into his mouth in a secluded booth with the chairman who had hired me to spearhead his S4 offer for Young's. Shona and I turned on the spot and drove back to our office in Charlotte Square without speaking.
Not until
The main factory was run-down and nothing short of demolition would put it right, and customers were vanishing as the big supermarket chains pushed north of the border. Young's once had a healthy stack of gilts and for a long time the interest from them had boosted profits, but they had gradually been sold to pay off borrowings and the firm was now sinking deeper and deeper into debt.
It did have one worthwhile asset, though, and it was more than enough to keep the vultures hovering. Young's had a Stock Exchange listing, and I was approached by an upand-coming grocery chain which wanted to go public but which didn't want the expense or the trouble of going to the market on its own.
My brief was to arrange a mutually beneficial takeover, an agreed bid that would give my client the prestige of a public company - and access to City fund raising - and give the Young's family the chance of taking the money and running. Or more likely driving away in the BMWs. Easy enough, you'd think, and normally it would have been but in this case I'd reckoned without Tony Walker.
He'd spotted the potential of Young's as a shell company all the way from London and had managed to buy up about three per cent of the shares in the market for �72,000. He'd then persuaded one of the older directors to sell him his stake for cash and that took Tony's holding to twelve per cent, and then he started putting pressure on for a seat on the board.
Tony had started professional life as an accountant, but soon realized he could do a lot better by running companies himself instead of just looking after their books. He'd borrowed something like a quarter of a million pounds from his father, a retired farmer, and started buying strategic stakes in companies ripe for takeover.
It was a bit like betting on racehorses, but more often 53 than not the favourite romped home and the winnings piled up. Then he came to the conclusion that he could do even better if he took part in the race himself, buying shares in companies and then negotiating for them to be taken over, more often than not from a position of authority within the firm. He usually made a double profit, a healthy manage- ment fee from the company and a boost to the value of his shareholding, which he would sell soon after the bid went through.
He was doing the same at Young's and had just got his seat on the board and had a West Midlands electronics company all ready to reverse into it when I came onto the scene. By then the share price was already on the way up, partly because the market was well aware of Walker's reputation and also because you can't do anything in this business without making ripples and the brokers knew there was a battle in the offing. My only chance was to put together an agreed bid, a package that all the directors would accept and recommend to the rest of the shareholders.
My tack was to appeal to their chauvinism and play on the Scottish roots of my client, 'Wouldn't it be a terrible shame to let this proud Scottish name be taken over by a crowd of heathen Sassenachs, remember Culloden', and so on. My pleas fell on deaf ears and glazed eyes while Tony was out wining and dining the sixty-eight-year-old matriarch of the Young's clan and playing golf with the rest of the board at a level well below his seven handicap.
I was fighting an uphill battle and the City watchers of the Clasgow Herald and Scotsman had just about given up on me when I decided to take Shona for a meal in one of Edinburgh's plusher restaurants.
We'd planned to overhaul our strategy in a bid to snatch victory from the jaws of this wide-mouthed London predator, but as it turned out we saw Tony Walker shoving smoked salmon and shrimps into his mouth in a secluded booth with the chairman who had hired me to spearhead his S4 offer for Young's. Shona and I turned on the spot and drove back to our office in Charlotte Square without speaking.
Not until
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