New Statesman Scotland
Vision Consulting has a good claim to being Scotland's most inventive e-business consultancy. It claims that there is barely any company in the country that it could not streamline and make more customer-friendly and therefore more profitable.
Vision's Alastair Wilkie reckons, as a rule of thumb, that he could pare back two-thirds of most costs in Scotland's public sector, including local authorities. Its current lead project is to create Intelligent Finance, the new e-bank for the Halifax.
There were a number of reasons why the Halifax chose Edinburgh rather than West Yorkshire or the Home Counties. One was relative costs. Another was the concentration of money-managing expertise in the city. The presence of Vision was no accident, either.
Intelligent Finance promises to shake up conventional banking as sharply as Direct Line did to conventional insurance a decade ago. Don Cruikshank's report's inventory of bank failings and sloth seems to be the guidebook for IF. It will be fun to watch when it goes "live" on the net.
The Scotch whisky industry loves to promote the illusion of remotely placed distilleries on romantic islands and up bonnie glens so that we can all taste the Highlands. Precious rarities are lovingly conserved by aged but expert retainers.
The truth is less comely. The distillers are often urban, and are mass-producing for the supermarkets rather than discerning individuals. Volume is the only serious game in the whisky business.
One oddity is Burn Stewart. It is situated in grotty East Kilbride in Lanarkshire, whose only other major employer is the Inland Revenue. The tiny but publicly quoted distiller has recently seen 2 per cent of its shares bought by directors.
The market found this a tease. The directors cannot be bluffing, but the firm still represents little more than a pile of debt and some unsold stocks. Burn Stewart is being squeezed by the supermarkets, its sole customers.
The Trinidad-based firm Angostura Holdings bought 28 per cent of the distiller last year, and it seems possible that the malts may fall to West Indian ownership. Angostura Bitters taste foul in whisky. Whatever is afoot, Burn Stewart shares suddenly look set for an enjoyable ride.
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