Rivals united
THE old adage about keeping your enemies close sprang to mind on hearing the owner of Tennent's Lager had acquired a 50% stake in drinks wholesale business Wallaces Express.
These days Tennent's is run by John Gilligan but it wasn't that long ago that he spent his days going toe- to-toe with Wallaces as a director of Wm Morton.
That irony was not lost on Mr Gilligan last week when The Bottom Line rang for a chat about Tennent's latest investment.
With the licensed trade a famously friendly place to do business, there should be no awkwardness when the former rivals get round the boardroom table.
Zero tolerance
The Bottom Line overheard one employee moaning that she had reached her "moron quota for the day" while in a lift in the financial services district in Glasgow.
Checking our watch we saw it wasn't even noon.
We can only hope that she was on a half-day.
Meetings, meetings
OUR collective eyebrows were more than a little raised by a survey showing office workers waste more than a year of their lives attending unnecessary meetings.
The study, by office-broker.com, also found workers said one-quarter of all time spent in meetings could be saved.
In a world where executives prefer to opt for jargon instead of plain speaking, we wonder whether this is a conservative estimate.
What recession?
With the UK staring down the barrel of triple-dip recession, one would have thought the days of executives being flown around in private jets were nearing an end.
Not so, it seems. CTC Aviation, the airline and pilot resource company, has confirmed plans to expand its elite operations service for private jet owners. This comes after research revealed a huge increase in the number of medium and large-sized aircraft delivered to the UK, with the numbers for 2007-2011 up 70% compared with 2002-2006.
The growth is attributed by CTC to the increasing number of ultra-high net worth individuals now based in the UK.
To quote George Osborne, it's good to see "we're all in this together".
It snow joke
WHEN Land Securities scheduled March 22 for the opening of its latest Glasgow retail development, 185-221 Buchanan Street, bosses will surely not have expected snow. Spring would have sprung by then, after all.
While the chill in the air didn't stop healthy crowds turning up, one new retailer might well have missed a trick.
As the snow fell, Land executive director Richard Akers, above, quipped that Paperchase ought to have been selling Christmas cards, such was the wintry scene unfolding before him.
We think Mr Akers had a point: at that stage there were only 272 shopping days left until Christmas, after all.
The Bottom Line can be contacted at thebottomline@theherald.co.ukor twitter: @Heraldbizdiary
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article