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My name is
Will(y).J.Nijsse. I worked at Holding
Company level for Lyons as Finance manager
in the Netherlands during the period 1975
-1980. In this period Lyons lost its
independence, which event was as emotional
for the employees working outside the UK
as it was for those in the UK
itself..
This is
what happened in the Netherlands
.
In the
beginning of the 1970's J.Lyons &
Company Ltd went for Continental Europe on
a bigger scale. Their biggest investments
by far were made in the Netherlands
.
On the map
the places are shown where the Dutch Lyons
companies had their activities as per
December 31 1975., the letters with the
numbers referring to the specific
branches.
1. Homburg
B.V. in Cuijk (A1) ,a pig slaughter house
and meat product factory.
Also a
factory in Wilp (A 2), a Pig breeding
station 'Fomeva' in Meijel (A 3), Sales
office in Kleve (Germany, A 4).
2.Beckers
B.V. in Deurne ( B 1), number one snack
producer in the Netherlands.Also factories
in Essen (Belgium B 2), in Meijel (B 3)
and in Helmond (B 4)
3.Hooimeijer
B.V. in Barendrecht (C 1) , the Dutch
bakery group: rusks, toast,
honeycake,shortbread, all types of
biscuits. To this group did also belong
the A.H.O. factory in Goirle (C 2), the
Haust factory in Amsterdam (C3) and the
Bussink factory in Deventer (C
4)
4.Marina
Kuchen G.m b.H. Two bakeries, one based in
Dortmund,Germany, (D1) and one in
Mettingen also in Germany ( D
2)
5.The
Alpha hotel in Amsterdam (E) with just
over 600 rooms was the biggest hotel in
the Netherlands at that time.The hotel was
part of the Strand Hotel group.
6.Hotel
Commodore, also a Strand Hotel, situated
at 12 Boulevard Haussmann in the middle of
Paris, France.
7. J.Lyons
Netherland Holdings BV. (JLNH),the Holding
company for the meat interests and Lyons
Bakkerijen Holdings B.V.(LBH) ,the Holding
company for the bakery interest were moved
from Amsterdam to our new office in The
Hague ( F). Two new companies were founded
at the end of 1975: Lyons Netherlands
Management B.V. and LIF B.V., a finance
vehicle that would start to operate from
the Netherlands, because the Dutch Central
Bank gave more freedom for currency
transactions in those days than the Bank
of England did..
Until the
end of 1975 the Meat group was under the
wings of John Gluckstein and Arthur Stocks
dealt with the Bakery group, whilst
Patrick Salmon devoted some of his time to
the Alpha Hotel.
In the
middle of 1975 the Board of J.Lyons &
Company Ltd took the decision to start
managing the overseas companies locally
rather than from the UK.
A Lyons'
Board member, Christopher R.L.Salmon
(CRLS), moved to the Netherlands as MD for
the new operation and he and his family
settled in Scheveningen , an old fishing
village that has become a suburb of the
Hague .
At the
same time Lyons asked a headhunter to find
a Dutch national " ….to be based in
the Netherlands within the Group's local
Holding Company. He will provide planning,
commercial, legal, accounting, tax and
cash management guidance " .
Other
requirements were a degree in accountancy
whilst fluency (apart from Dutch) in
English and German was asked for and some
knowledge of French would be an advantage.
Familiarity on a on-going basis with the
overall commercial scene in
Holland,
Belgium
and Germany was also on Lyons' shopping
list.
A sheep
with five legs? Maybe, but as a matter of
fact I worked at that time in Amsterdam
for the Bowater Corporation in a similar
function and as Bowater had plans to
withdraw herself from the Netherlands and
Belgium, I thought that time had come to
look for another job.
However,
before I could take any action in this
direction, Lyons' headhunter knocked at my
door. Headhunters seem to have a good nose
for this type of
circumstances..
On
September 18 ,1975 I visited Cadby Hall
for the first time in order to meet
several Board members and Senior staff. On
October 14 everything was signed and
sealed and I could start with Lyons on
December 31st 1975. A funny date to start,
but a Dutch Director was needed for the
founding of LIF B.V . (Lyons'
International Finance) on the last day of
that year!
Happy New
Year to everybody and the real work could
begin. We hired a secretary, Mrs Tinka
Hofstra-Faeseler (THF), who had some years
of working experience in London as well as
in Brussels. She was, besides in Dutch as
her mother tongue, fluent in English,
French and German and had also a little
Italian.
A 2 days a
week bookkeeper completed our staff and
brought the total number up to
3.1/2.
We had
more nameplates at the front door of our
office than people inside !
Our 4-room
office was situated at Kleine Loo 402 a in
the Hague. For language freaks amongst
you: 'klein' means 'small' in Dutch and
'loo' is an old Dutch word for 'wood' ,
but our English colleagues did not want to
hear my explanation and so we started the
Dutch operation in January 1976 with a
smile…….
What did
the picture look like?
The
Beckers company was one of the jewels on
the Lyons' crown . Year after year they
made substantial profits.
The
Hooimeijer Group never performed as well
as expected at the time of acquisition in
1973. Anyhow there were no losses to be
accounted for and that was at least
something. The results of the Marina
Kuchen Bakery in Germany looked about the
same.
The Alpha
Hotel did not perform satisfactorily. A
hotel of this seize seemed too big for a
small country like the Netherlands. The
majority of the Dutch businessmen leave
their houses in the morning and return
home the same day . The Jumbo jets did not
bring the number of hotel guests as was
budgetted for and only an exhibition, a
congress, bad weather or an airport strike
could fill up the hotel, but otherwise it
was a continuous battle to get the
occupancy rate up.
The
Commodore Hotel in Paris looked much like
the same, but this hotel was much smaller
and the problems were of a different
nature.
And then
there was Homburg B.V, the pig meat
business. Right from the time that the
company came into the hands of Lyons,
their profits changed into enormous
losses.In seven words the reason for this
dramatic turnaround can be explained loud
and clear: The US closed their borders for
hams.
Nobody
(except the Americans) could be blamed for
that but in the years to come Homburg had
the doubtful honour to be one of Lyons'
biggest problems.
During the
first half year of 1975 we 'found the
money on the streets'. It was easy to make
substantial savings. Ongoing legal and tax
procedures as well as the bookkeeping of
the Holding companies we now did inhouse,
in this way we saved the fees of outside
professionals. The terms with the banks
were renegotiated, but now for the Dutch
Group as one entity and not for each
individual company. Centralised cash
management kept the use of overdraft costs
to a minimum. Already in February 1976 I
asked and got permission from the Lyons
Board, to buy in a part of the 7% J.Lyons
Convertible Loan stock (quoting far below
par) on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. The
profit on this exercise covered all costs
of our small office for many years.
Regular
meetings with the MD's of the companies
and from time to time with the FD's were
the places where experiences and ideas
were exchanged. The Buying departments
started to exchange their buying prices.
For the first time the Lyons Companies
operated as a group.
The lines
to Cadby Hall were short: Christopher
Salmon operated at Board level, I kept the
contacts with all types of disciplines. It
took 2.1/2 hours travelling from our
office or homes to Cadby Hall via
Rotterdam Airport and having an hour's
time difference between the UK and
Holland, we reached Hammersmith Road often
at 8:30 in the morning, returning home the
same evening.
In Cadby
Hall only the A-Block, Addison Mansions
and Elms House were still in use. All
other buildings gazed at you, empty, grey
and grim. Sometimes a man with a
Kalasnykov fired at a police car from one
of the windows,whilst a screaming woman
was thrown from the roof. The reason of
all this was that the empty premises of
Cadby Hall were used as a scenery for a TV
film from time to time.
Back to
the Dutch Group, where the news early
January 1977 that the Strand Hotel was
sold to Trust House Forte was received
with mixed feelings. In our eyes the price
for which the deal had been settled was
far too low. Tinka, our secretary, had the
initials THF and the sour joke went around
that the Strand Hotel Group was sold to
THF at a 30% discount, because Tinka
worked for Lyons and therefore was
entitled to this sort of discount for the
hotels…..
Excluded
from the deal with THF were the Tower
Hotel in London, the Alpha in Amsterdam,
The Commodore in Paris and the Parc Hotel
in Sienna (It). In the course of the year
we sold The Alpha to the Novotel Group.
The Commodore was sold to Aer Lingus and
also the two remaining hotels were sold
during the year 1977.
At the
same time Lyons disposed of the Wimpy's
Group, but with only 3 franchised Wimpy's
in Holland, this deal hardly touched us.
I was
present at Cadby Hall for the presentation
of Lyons' Annual Figures 1977. The
presentation by Lyons' MD Len Badham was
no laughing matter and all of us were very
concerned about the future of the
Company.
The press
in Britain as well as in Holland started
to criticize Lyons. The Financial Times
shouted: "Too much Salmon is bad for
Lyons" aiming at the large number of
members of the Salmon family at high
positions within the Lyons Company. And
(afterwards) the journalists all knew
precisely what Lyons had been doing wrong
in all those years before.
During
that very same week Lyons' share price
surprisingly went up and the number of
shares traded increased considerably. The
speculations started: any sharks around?
Nestlé, Philip Morris, Unilever and
Danone were names frequently heard as
potential candidates for a takeover but
soon thereafter the news was revealed that
Allied Breweries Ltd would make an offer
for all outstanding Lyons
shares.
Lyons had
difficulty accepting being taken over by
Allied and closed their eyes to the
reality. I once wrote a letter with the
sentence: ".....at the time of the
take-over by
Allied Breweries ....." and as
result of that I received a letter from a
Lyons Board member telling me that "I was
misinformed about Allied Breweries' take
over of Lyons. The parties had
achieved a merger."
Busy times
arrived for our office in The Hague, as
Allied's auditors visited our companies in
order to see what Allied really had
bought. All basic information was
available in our office. After the
auditor's investigation, some Allied Board
members wanted to visit the newly acquired
companies and also Allied's Pension fund
and other disciplines started to collect
information about the Lyons' companies.
Allied House became another regular
destination.
Allied
Breweries already owned a Brewery Group in
the Netherlands, consisting of four
breweries. To this Group also belonged a
soft drink company, a spirits and wine
company and an advocaat factory (Warnink).
In Belgium this Group possessed a small
brewery and a mineral water source and in
Paris, France, they had a large
distribution centre The Anker Bir Brewery,
a joint venture in Jakarta, Indonesia,
completed the Dutch Allied picture. The
Skol Breweries with their head office in
Breda were the number two brewery in the
Netherlands after Heineken.
We paid
some courtesy visits to our new group
members but didn't enter into closer
contacts.
In the
meantime Homburg B.V.continued to be a
problem. The high losses were still there
and the only real option should be to
close down the factories. Buyers for the
Homburg company were not available as
there was a huge overcapacity in the pig
meat industry. Companies like Unilever
were already taking measures to decrease
their activities in this part of their
business and in no way we could expect to
find a buyer for Homburg.
Lyons'
Profit and Loss account could not afford
to write off this investment with in
addition to this write off , the high
redundancy payments in relation with an
eventual close down . So as a result of
that, Lyons had to accept the annual flow
of losses and came into the position of
sitting right in the middle between the
devil and the deep blue sea.
Lyons
transferred a marketing manager (Laurence
Morey) to Holland. In our office in The
Hague he got the only spare room we had.
His main task was to look at Homburg 's
position in the market and to bring out an
advise.
On a
temporary basis Lyons brought in some
staff from their Profit Improvement Unit (
PIU ) ,which Unit was managed by Bill
Holland at that time. They would look at
procedures, possible savings and measures
to be taken within Homburg B.V.. I like to
emphasize that Lyons showed an enormous
amount of loyalty to this Company!
As a
result of all this, Homburg ended up in a
reorganisation, reducing the number of
staff and closing down a factory.
Everything
improved, except the losses and the end
should come in 1986 when Allied-Lyons PLC
( the new combined name for the Company)
decided to give away Homburg B.V. in the
real sense of the word and on top of that
paying an amount of money as an exit
premium. Before the year 1990 could start
the Homburg Company ceased to
exist.
Gradually
the situation in Cadby Hall was changing.
After the retirement of Len Badham, Lyons'
Managing Director, Allied Breweries
brought in Sir Alex Alexander (previously
at Unigate) to become the new
MD.
In the
autumn of 1979 it was announced that
Christopher Salmon would leave Lyons
before the end of that year. The French
have the expression "Incompatiblité
d'humeurs" for such a situation. By the
end of 1979 Christopher Salmon left
Holland and settled in France. At the same
time John S.Garner, until then the
controller of the Lyons Group, was
appointed Finance Director of Lyons,
replacing John N.Mendelssohn. JNM 's new
rôle was Executive Continental Food
(ECF), not only replacing Christopher
Salmon, but on top of that he also was
made responsible for the Lyons interests
in Italy, Spain and France. He was
assisted by the Controller Continental
Food (CCF), Geoff S.Whaley. Geoff had
working experience in Italy and spoke
Italian and Spanish, which of course was
an advantage in his new
function..
The base
of Continental Food was Cadby Hall. You
don't have to be a clairvoyant nor an
organisation expert to forecast that this
new set-up would not work So many
different businesses widely spread over
Europe, with so many languages ( seven,
when we include Flemish ) and with
different cultures cannot be governed
successfully by two persons residing in
London. I was made accountable to Geoff
Whaley.
In Holland
the regular meetings of the MD's as well
FD's were abolished. Six month later
almost all contacts between the Dutch
companies had disappeared.
Lawrence
Morey, the marketing manager, was
withdrawn to London and left Lyons
somewhat later.
I was no
longer allowed to have direct contacts
neither with Allied House nor with Cadby
Hall. All contacts in future should go via
the CCF.
In the
beginning of February 1980 I visited Cadby
Hall and at that moment I had no idea that
this would be the very last time for me. I
was instructed to close down the office in
the Hague and to discharge the staff
members left. I had to find myself a room
at Hooimeijer 's in
Barendrecht.
The
headhunters started again to knock at my
door………
But Allied
Breweries Ltd took the lead. Vernon Cull,
till before Lyons' treasurer, had become
treasurer for the whole Group and was
based in Allied House. He phoned me and
told me that.Allied had transferred the
four Dutch Holding and Finance Companies
from Cadby Hall to Allied House. In the
head office of Skol Breweries in Breda an
office should be emptied for me and I
could make use there of all facilities I
should need. Formally I left the Lyons
organisation and joined Allied Breweries,
reporting to Vernon Cull, but Lyons could
continue to make use of my services if
they wanted to do so. Vernon joined Lyons
in 1975, 3 months earlier than I did and
right from the beginning we established a
pleasant relationship, a relationship that
now could be renewed.
A year
later, I was appointed Finance Director of
the Skol Brewery Group in Holland
continuing to be responsible for the Lyons
Holding and Financing companies in
Holland.
Lyons
implemented a new setup for the Continent
and a number of people, amongst them Jack
Silverman, a Lyons Board member, took over
responsibility for the Lyons companies in
continental Europe..
Lyons once
again had the same organisation as they
started with in the early Seventies. Back
to square one, as they say. But Lyons
couldn't do anything else: fragmentation
within Allied-Lyons PLC had started and
all Lyons Companies were patiently waiting
for their turn to be sold. In the
beginning of the last decade of the
century it was all over. A twenty years'
adventure to the Lowlands, had come to an
end.
Around the
year 1400 , Thomas à Kempis told us
"O quam cito transit gloria mundi". (Oh
how quickly the world's glory passes
away).
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