Fyffes/DCC spat will prove costly for both

GROUND FLOOR: The focus of interest for a lot of Irish traders over the next few weeks will be on whether Jim Flavin engaged in a spot of insider trading in Fyffes shares or whether the Lotus Green transaction was an independent trade carried out behind a Chinese Wall. Although we have had our fair share of business front page stories, we've rarely had head-to-head confrontations like the DCC/Fyffes affair.

One of the main pieces of evidence from Fyffes is a taped recording of Mr Flavin discussing a transaction in relation to the sale of Fyffes shares with Davy Stockbrokers. Usually taped conversations between stockbrokers and clients are used when there is a dispute about the price of the transaction, or the quantity of the stocks involved, or maybe even the settlement date because normally, for most conversations, both parties are actually authorised to conduct the trade in the first place.

I remember a number of occasions in my trading days where we had to access the tapes to resolve a dispute about the terms of the trade. And the worst part of listening to the conversations (apart from the fact that your voice always sounds so awful on tape) is that you also have to listen to some of the most rubbishy conversations that you ever had in your life.

Because, often when you were talking to a client, you'd ask questions about their weekend or their families or share a few jokes. At the time, it all seemed caring and interesting but, listened to weeks or months later, it's toe-curlingly embarrassing.

And then, of course, depending on the outcome of the actual trading conversation, it can be toe-curlingly expensive.

There has been some comment made on the fact that Jim Flavin laughs during this conversation. Regardless of why he was laughing, I can confirm that listening to laughter between broker and client on a taped phone call is always painful - the laughter sounds hollow and forced even in those rare moments of genuine amusement.

I never owned any Fyffes shares but I do remember having a conversation with one of my own clients - back at the time when they were trading around the €4 mark and worldoffruit.com was the next big dotcom thing - in which we both wondered whether the entire planet had gone bananas.

And it seemed that it had because it wasn't a whole heap of time later that worldoffruit was being treated in the Fyffes accounts as "discontinued operations" at a cost of €15.6 million in the 14 months to the end of December 2000.

In the same period, the joint venture company IngredientsNet.com had cost Fyffes €1.3 million and it ceased operations six months later.

Meantime, the Fyffes shares took on all the downward momentum of someone who had slipped on a particularly large banana skin.

The problem for Irish investors who wish to put their money in home-grown businesses is that there are so few of them. The current hostilities between Fyffes and DCC have also caused an outbreak of schizophrenia in many investors who own shares in both companies. Never has the notion of spreading your risk looked both so appealing and so dismal as the Fyffes share price rises and the DCC share price falls.

Regardless of the outcome of the case, of course, it will be an expensive outing for all parties involved since the phalanx of legal brains won't come cheap; though the learned gentlemen who are representing both sides are probably equally caught up in the outcome whether they personally own shares in them or not, since almost all Irish pension funds are invested in them.

I also see, from newspaper reports, that an organisation called the Bewley Foundation is a Fyffes shareholder.

The name Bewley brings only one thing to mind at the moment and that is the almost incessant clamour of dismay following the closure of the Dublin cafés. I wrote about Bewley's problems a few weeks ago, before the closures were announced, but with the feeling that they were inevitable. Nevertheless, it's amazing how many people are now saying that the cafés should be "saved". Too late. They could only have been saved by more people drinking more coffee in them and that was never going to happen.

I was asked by a number of journalists covering the story of the closures whether I had fond memories of Bewley's and, of course, I had.

Like every Dubliner of a certain age, going to Bewley's was a glamorous treat for me. The smell of the roasting coffee beans in the windows, the exotically painted tins of tea and the ubiquitous sticky buns will always live in my memory. But the Bewley's that closed its doors last week bore no relation to the cafés of the past.

There seems to be an almost universal opinion that the coffee was terrible and the buns had long since lost the appeal. The sandwiches were pre-packaged and tasteless and the home-made soup was nearly as bad as anything I'd make myself.

So it didn't matter that the cafés were part of our glorious heritage, they were offering poor value and poor service even though they were located in expensive rental areas. Customers voted with their feet.

Calls to subsidise the cafés are absolute nonsense, companies must stand or fall by their own merits.

There is, of course, a case to be made for retaining the frontages and it would seem to me that anyone acquiring the premises would want to do that, if only to retain the sense of loyalty that people have to the concept of the cafés - if not for the products themselves.

There is some speculation that the Insomnia chain might take them over though many people don't want them to change the name. Keeping the Bewley's name may be a good marketing ploy, but I really and truly hope that they change the coffee.