Inventive analysis.

Investors Chronicle, November, 2006

Analysing the metrics used to justify this week's takeover bids, I can't help but wonder if three have been overlooked: disingenuous self-interest, jingoism and vanity. NTL's GBP4.74bn bid for ITV, which has been turned down by ITV's board and effectively blocked by BSkyB's 18 per cent stake, led NTL shareholder Sir Richard Branson to attack BSkyB and the rest of Rupert Murdoch's media empire as not so much a curb on his own ambition as a threat to "democracy in this country" (somewhat rich, given his own cosying up to government, and his record on shareholder democracy - not to mention the threat to our personal freedoms posed by the cancellation of the 11.58 from Manchester Piccadilly to the investors chronicle Roadshow in Edinburgh, among other so-called 'Virgin...

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