NOW HERE IS a blast from the past. Jardines boss Henry Keswick is still kicking, and recently aimed a kick at a Financial Times editorial that criticised Ford Motor Co for putting family back in the driving seat and booting a hireling out.
'Unwise and foolishly politically correct,' railed Mr Keswick in a published letter to the FT, topping it off with a reference to the newspaper's 'egalitarian agenda of its own rather spoilt journalists'.
Mr Keswick thinks that family members are the best choice to run Ford because 'your racing correspondent might perhaps remind you that the genes of fast horses are more likely to produce winners.'
Come again, Henry. I missed a step of reasoning there in your theory of genetics and corporate performance. Seems to boast about as much logic as FT does racing correspondents. And, since the genes of fast horses is your choice of analogy, could you please tell us a little about your own progeny?
What seems odd here at first is the fury Mr Keswick musters for something in which he has little personal interest.
But think again. There is an exact parallel with Jardines itself, another family controlled (I deliberately avoid the word 'owned') company that has long alternated between putting hirelings in the driving seat and then sacking them in favour of family members.
The results do not necessarily confirm that the fast horses were the family ones. In fact there is an old joke around town that the Keswicks have the magic touch. Whatever they touch they can make disappear. Trouble is they only play the trick with money.
