Media as green as all the rest

21 April 2008

The Herald, Tim Sharp, 21 April 2008

Utility giant Iberdrola, ScottishPower's owner, summoned the press of Europe to the Northern Spanish city of Bilbao this week to listen to the thoughts of dominant company boss Ignacio Galan.

The event was notable for the natty matching ties of the bank's top executives, all in bright Iberdrola green, and its location in the Basque city's stunning Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art.

The press pack focused on grilling Galan about his intentions towards British Energy, a takeover threat from EDF and the size of his pay package, but it may have missed a better story right under its collective nose.

The day the media throng left, the museum fired its chief financial officer for allegedly embezzling some £400,000. He has offered to pay it all back.

THE great and the good of corporate and political worlds gathered in The Caves on Edinburgh's Niddry Street this week under the auspices of Reform Scotland, the tartan offshoot of free-market think-tank Reform, which is chaired by Noble Group's Ben Thomson.

It was undoubtedly the correct site for such a gathering of Edinburgh's intelligentsia, as in the 1770s it was home of The Oyster Club, set up by physicist Joseph Black and philosophers Adam Smith and David Hume. There they drank porter and ate oysters while debating the great scientific and philosophical topics of their age.

However, Business Diary is not sure that all participants took advantage of the opportunity to address contemporary subjects of serious import. Our mole spotted Reform Scotland trustee and former Scottish Financial Enterprise chief Amanda Harvie, telling two rather startled red-top hacks about her equestrian exploits and the sad case of her horse's broken toe.

WHAT would Black, Hume and Smith have made of the proposals from four Scottish businessmen, who present themselves as Renfrewshire's answer to the BBC's Dragon's Den, for reforming the education system to make it more business friendly?

The self-styled Local Business Legends - Iain Graham (Graham Technology), Steve Clark (Clark Contracts), John McGlynn (The Airlink Group) and John McGuire (Phoenix Car Company) believe entrepreneur-ship should become a compulsory subject in all Scotland's schools and want universities and colleges to start offering degrees in selling, as many American ones already do.

The four are judges of Renfrewshire Chamber of Commerce's Local Business Legends 2008 competition, that will give budding entrepreneurs the chance to share a £35,000 pot to back their business idea.