Back in 1987 The Sun took exception to Sir Nicholas Goodison, then chairman of the London Stock Exchange.
City editor Damien McCrystal thought him a fuddy-duddy holding back the Square Mile and told editor Kelvin MacKenzie the paper should run a campaign to get him ousted. “Have him,” said MacKenzie. They did. Goodison just died aged 87 after a distinguished career. The Daily Telegraph had him as “cerebral”, “donnish” and “patrician” all things that may have wound-up The Sun. If the LSE were surprised then to see a Sun bus full of page 3 girls handing out badges and t-shirts saying the chairman must go, they would be astonished now. It is hard to imagine something similar happening these days. Tabloids don’t have the same influence, nor the same devil-may-care approach. During the pandemic, the attitude to much of officialdom has been, with some exceptions, that they are probably doing their best in very difficult circumstances. Perhaps flaks could raise the Goodison example to clients complaining about the coverage they are getting. “Look chief,” they could say. “As long as you haven’t got a bus full of page-3 girls camped outside your office demanding you be sacked, things aren’t going that badly.”
Interesting work here on shorting, a topic hacks love, from GraniteShares.
The most shorted – i.e. bet against – shares in the UK are Cineworld, Sainsbury’s Petropavlovsk, Hammerson and Domino’s. The fund managers with the most short positions are GLG, followed by BlackRock and Jupiter.
