Mark Kleinman: His weekly column on Arrival, the CBI and Rishi’s latest wheeze
Mark Kleinman is Sky News’ City Editor and the man who gets the Square Mile talking, He writes a weekly column for CityAM
To travel well, it’s said, is better than to arrive. Try telling that to shareholders in Arrival, the New York-listed (would-be) electric van manufacturer, whose journey hitching a ride since it went public has been all downhill, at an accelerating pace.
Its shares are now suspended and the company has indeed arrived – in administration. Shareholders have little hope of seeing any return after the stock was suspended last week for breaching Nasdaq’s listing requirements. Many investors express bemusement about why its collapse took so long: Arrival was served with several Nasdaq warning notices even as its inexorable journey limping towards insolvency was hidden in plain sight.
Several firms of investment banks and insolvency practitioners came and went, with EY the latest to take on the role of contingency planning for Arrival’s administration.
If you were looking for the perfect example of the follies of the US SPAC bubble, Arrival would be it. Yet the business model with which its innovative electric van prototype was to be taken into commercial production, through a string of micro-factories, was hopelessly flawed. A series of sale processes and a hunt for external capital to prop it up have failed. The best it can hope for now seems to be the disposal of its patents and its smart robotics technology.
On the day it listed, Arrival had a market value of over $13bn, and had drawn backing from the likes of Blackrock, Hyundai and the logistics group UPS.
Its listing in New York was, at the time, viewed as another disappointment for the London stock market, a British-based start-up flying across the Atlantic in expectation of a bumper price tag and a surefire route to global success.
That belief deserves wholesale reappraisal. Had Arrival’s shares been listed in London, I suspect they would have been suspended months ago. The company has been allowed by US regulators to exist in a vacuum of silence despite reliable reports of its looming insolvency.
Arrival’s woes apply a different spin to the constant London vs New York listing debate. The City has undeniably lost out on a number of desirable IPOs, including during the SPAC boom, but Arrival was definitively not among them.
The CBI questions that still remain despite settlement
Tony Danker can finally board a bus again. After describing his defenestration as the CBI director-general last April as akin to being run, and then reversed, over by a large passenger road vehicle, he can finally move on with his career.
The settlement he reached with the business lobbying group was mired in secrecy (so much so that a senior CBI employee claimed to be unaware of it half an hour before it was announced), but consistent with its past form, it feels like the organisation still has serious questions to answer.
For a start, the statement it issued on Monday acknowledging the agreement contained no reference to the sum it had agreed to pay him. That’s normal in such situations, but CBI members who are being asked to recommit to the body are entitled to know how much of their money is being consigned to severance payments.
Consistent with its past form, it feels like the organisation still has serious questions to answer
Secondly, the fact that the CBI has written a cheque to Danker implies that its original characterisation of his dismissal was flawed. It will be interesting to know whether Rupert Soames, the new chairman, backs the handling of Danker’s departure by predecessor Brian McBride.
The CBI has regained more momentum than many of its now-departed members anticipated when it was on the brink of financial ruin last autumn. A vote of confidence from the UK boss of PricewaterhouseCoopers will undoubtedly encourage other wavering corporates to return to the fold.
There remain reasons, though, after the ambiguous way that Danker’s exit was dealt with and now settled, to suggest that the required churn of senior leaders remains in its infancy if the CBI is to regain a semblance of its former credibility.
Sunak business council is poor excuse for real engagement
All hail the new business council of prime minister Rishi Sunak. For the 15 public company grandees and entrepreneurs named in last week’s Downing Street announcement, there was no doubt a frisson of excitement at being anointed to the inner sanctum of government.
Perhaps they shouldn’t get too excited. I suspect this group will be squeezed into the PM’s diary – at most – three times between now and the general election, for 90 minutes of platitudes and little of substance. If that sounds unduly critical, it merely reflects what past members of committees convened by Sunak’s predecessors have concluded.
Rotating the membership of such committees every 12 months is pointless: it denies them the chance to forge the kind of rapport which might yield more productive contributions.
It was, at least, sensible to pick several entrepreneurs and bosses of privately owned companies, rather than the monochrome line-up of FTSE-100 chiefs that Sunak installed in 2023. The timing of last week’s announcement, though, coming just hours before Labour’s flagship confidence, betrays an insecurity at the heart of government about its standing in the business community. A committee of 15 people whose members will disappear next year whatever the election outcome is not the remedy.