Last year, the tale was that the cash was being held in a Cayman Islands bank account and the paperwork to prove its existence had been delayed because of hurricanes.Now Sir Thomas makes the extraordinary statement about the progress of the audit: "There is no hitch and to the best of my knowledge there are no outstanding requests for information from Kingston Smith." It is a statement that may come as a surprise to Kingston Smith, which has made no significant progress for a year.Kingston Smith is refusing to resign, despite the stonewalling from Boustead, but its responsibility is only to audit information, not to seek it out. An army of small shareholders have had no communication from their company since the suspension. Sir Thomas tells Small Talk not to worry. He is "expecting the nod at any minute" from the auditors, Kingston Smith. "It is all pending and so very nearly ready for issue, with full circulars and so forth, that it would be quite out of order for me to make a further statement."The £2.6m is all accounted for, he insists. Its auditors have still not been able to sign off the accounts for the year to March 2004 And now, the accounts for March 2005 are also overdue.
Trading in Boustead shares, readers will remember, was halted in February pending clarification of its financial position. And so it should be: German companies may be feeling more optimistic these days and German exports may be performing well but there can be no doubt that Germany, too, is "hollowing out". All those extra exports certainly look impressive but German consumers must be wondering what on earth is going on. Their spending has been absolutely stagnant in recent years (see chart). No wonder German consumers, like their Japanese forebears, have a permanently hollow feeling.Stephen King is managing director of economics at HSBCstephen.king hsbcib . This has gone beyond a joke, right? Sir Thomas Macpherson, the chairman of the cash shell Boustead, has a new story as to the whereabouts of the company's missing £2.6m.
Change is risky, sometimes painful and always politically difficult But avoiding change is simply not an option. Japan's experience of globalisation led to a radical restructuring of its industrial organisation, a reflection of the shift in comparative advantages both within and across its industries.Even if Europe recognises that this shift is taking place, it seems unsure of what to do: Germany's federal election results surely demonstrate that the German population remains confused about Germany's economic role in the wider world. Both countries have stagnated, and both are finding it difficult to come to terms with the new challenges.There are differences. German industry appears to have responded more aggressively than Italian industry, forcing down labour costs and, in the process, maintaining its share of world trade. Italian industry, in contrast, has struggled to deal with the new world order: its textile companies, for example, are among those who would rather build a "fortress Europe", barricaded from the onslaught coming from ever-more mobile capital and the competition from cheaper labour.If Japan's experience offers anything to Europe, it's that an economic system simply has to change in order to survive.