OPINION: Editorial - Huntsworth plan looks sacrificial

Barely has the ink dried on his resignation and Chadlington is on

the warpath. This time his sights are on marketing services company

Huntsworth, in which he and other members of a concert party have been

building a stake which outweighs that of its current management.

Earlier this week, Huntsworth opted for what has been dubbed the

’nuclear option’ of an open auction. However, a price tag of pounds 10

million plus debt, its recent track record and the premium on the

shareprice that the concert party would no doubt demand, are pretty

off-putting.

Huntsworth has a good client base and decent margins, and the debt has

reduced from pounds 13 million to pounds 3.5 million, so who is to say

that it might not return a dividend given another 18 months? But it is

unlikely to be given the necessary time to prove the value of

maintaining its current directorship and any sale requires the concert

party’s approval. By its decision to go to auction, Huntsworth has also

forfeited the chance to mount a robust defence to the concert party’s

offence - a fact that will not have gone unnoticed by its employees.

Could this be a Catch-22?