Coats to leave threadbare presence. Sad reflections on a tetile giant which is slipping quietly away.

presence in the city -- where J. & P. Coats, threadmakers to the world,

were once a leading corporate force, with a headquarters staff alone of

some 600 -- are slipping quietly away.

A shake-up in the group's #1000m-a-year thread division is removing

the last senior management layer from the group's offices at 155 St

Vincent Street. A few staff are being relocated to London and elsewhere.

Others are being offered severance terms.

All that will be left in St Vincent Street will be group corporate

services, comprising activities like pension fund administration and

investment, intellectual property and group insurance. Less than 50

people are employed in these areas.

The office block where they work, which still bears the Coats Viyella

logo, was sold by the company to PosTel last October. Two floors are

currently vacant and, once the latest changes are complete, the Coats

presence will be reduced to a single leased floor. Morale in the Glasgow

office is said to have hit rock bottom.

The changes, approved at a January main board meeting, follow Coats

Viyella's successful 1991 hostile takeover bid for rival thread maker

Tootal. Thread is being reorganised into largely autonomous regional

businesses around the globe, with Coats Viyella's London headquarters,

in Savile Row, exercising tight financial controls.

The merger with Tootal has already resulted in a rationalisation of

the two groups' thread making activities in the west of Scotland, where

Coats alone employed 12,000 people as recently as the 1950s.

In November 1991 Coats Viyella announced the closure of its last

remaining Anchor mill in Paisley and Tootal's English Sewing finishing

mill at Neilston. Some processes were transferred to Lisnaskea in

Northern Ireland. Others to a refurbished plant at Newton Mearns. But

some 300 jobs were lost.

Now, St Vincent Street -- from where Coats Patons (formed in 1961 from

the merger of J. &. P Coats and Patons & Baldwins) ran its business

until it was willingly taken over in March 1986 by Sir David Alliance's

Vantona Viyella -- is effectively a shell presence.

''All the spirit, all the sense of belonging has gone'' says one close

observer. ''For the moment, things like pension fund management and

trade marks remain, but for how long?'' asks another.

Some are prepared to accept that the changes are in the company's best

long-term interests. Others allege a crass management style.

It seems that Michael Bell, chairman of thread division, was the last

real bulwark supporting a significant corporate presence in Glasgow.

When he died, in an air crash at Bangalore, India, in 1990, and the bid

for Tootal succeeded, Glasgow's links with Coats entered their final

chapter.