Tim Worstall

Merrill Lynch and The Guardian.

Interesting news:

Guardian Media Group, publisher of the loss-making Guardian and
Observer newspapers, has appointed US investment bank Merrill Lynch to
advise on strategic options.

I do hope they’re going to be using those special merchant bankers. You know, the ones who earn the median wage, don’t have huge bonuses, don’t spend fortunes on cocktails and don’t contribute to the widening inequality of our society.

I mean really, that wouldn’t do at all now would it? For The Guardian to contribute to the fattest pay packets in the country? For as we know, inequality kills!

Or perhaps they are paying the going rate? The excuse being that the survival of the Scott Trust being such an important objective that they have no choice but to pay forthe best. Hhhmm. Wonder if that excuse works for other customers as well?

Oh well, no doubt they’ll make sure those bankers pay a special extra tax rate or something.

In

6 responses

  1. angry economist Avatar
    angry economist

    Well I’d say that they were going down the tubes.
    The content, and the lack of news coverage smacks of mid-1990s Independent financial crises – the paper getting thinner and thinner every day, padding out with crap columnists.

    Reply
  2. johnny bonk Avatar
    johnny bonk

    I can’t see the G. going down the tubes, if anything its got the wind in its sails .. full of confidence and the ear of government and perhaps the mood of the times.
    Do I correctly observe that it is by far the most referenced british daily in USA blogs ?
    It is arguably the best buy of the British broadsheets at the moment (though what that says about Britain !!????!!!).
    It also has to be noted that Larry Elliot(economics editor) has come a long way in from the cold fringes of batty economics and pays only lip service these days to the G.’s traditional hatred of truth and reason in matters of economics.
    Rushbridger should still be taken out and shot though.
    Tim adds: No, they won’t go bust. The national papers are losing 60 million a year (part of this is to do with the new Berliner presses) but they have about 2 billion of assets in regionals and magazines. The whole thing is owned by a trust, the only purpose of which is to keep the G running. Plenty of capital there.

    Reply
  3. dearieme Avatar
    dearieme

    With a lockhold on British “public sector” advertising, how do they manage to lose money? Apart from overpaying the hacks, that is.

    Reply
  4. johnny bonk Avatar
    johnny bonk

    The Guardian makes me fuming mad often enough … current bee-in-my-bonnet is the uncritical acceptance that we are at peak oil, but there’s loads more that gets me ranting. My gf points out that they can’t hear me ranting but that she can ….
    If it closed down though,I guess I would miss it.

    Reply
  5. David Gillies Avatar
    David Gillies

    If the Tories win the next election a really sneaky thing they could do would be to issue an edict from Cabinet Office that no recruitment notices are to be posted in the Guardian until further notice. Ideally, of course, there’d be no recruitment notices posted anywhere at all (instead, there’d be headlines such as “DTI, DEFRA, DCMS, DfES, DWP, DfT, DFID scrapped: 1.2 million civil servants made redundant; John Prescott, Stephen Byers hanged”)

    Reply
  6. johnny bonk Avatar
    johnny bonk

    “John Prescott, Stephen Byers hanged”
    Ken maggot-in-the-brain LIVINGSTONE first for the noose .. bagsy I pull the lever. Nasty thug.

    Reply

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