KEY POINTS:
Of last year's three big corporate stories, the potential sale of The Warehouse is the last one standing.
And its future now hangs on the Court of Appeal hearing next week.
Ignoring the depressing spectacle of collapsing finance companies, the two other great market yarns of 2007 were
the Auckland Airport sale and plans for the partial float of Fonterra.
Both of those have bitten the dust in 2008 - a year which is proving to be something of graveyard for any positive corporate activity.
The airport sale was killed off by the political game playing of the Government and the Fonterra proposal looks to have been unpalatable to conservative farmer shareholders.
If the Court of Appeal sides with the Commerce Commission and blocks the Warehouse sale it will be painful for business writers (and readers) to ponder just how much time and effort, and how many thousands of words, have been poured in to these three stories over the past 18 months. In the case of Auckland Airport, the blow was all the more cruel - for all the parties involved - in that the Government's rule change to veto the proposal came just days before the end of an expensive, time-consuming process. Regardless of whether it was the right decision (and Treasury papers released this week added weight to the view that it wasn't), the timing was just downright rude.
Fonterra's move last year to promote a partial NZX listing to its farmers was greeted with great enthusiasm by everyone from stock brokers and investors to politicians and business commentators.
Everyone except the farmers as it turned out. They disliked the proposal so much that Fonterra has had to go back to the drawing board before the plan was even put to the vote.
So the Warehouse decision is a big one. If Woolworths and Foodstuffs get the green light then the bidding war will be a shot in the arm for everyone involved with the market.
But this is also a big decision because - in the eyes of the commission at least - The Warehouse represents the last hope of bringing a third grocery player to the market.
But in October last year the High Court did not accept that it was true.
Justice Mallon ruled that The Warehouse was never likely to be a serious third player in the grocery market.
Given the magnitude of what the commission claims, it seems reasonable they should want the process around any sale to be full and thorough. So good luck to them next week.
If there is any reason why their case was misinterpreted, for the sake of the New Zealand consumer, let it be heard.
But if the High Court decision is upheld, then let the bidding begin
The Warehouse - like Auckland Airport - is a publicly listed private company. Just as Fonterra farmers have a right not to sell their shares, so too should other investors have a right to sell theirs.
HARD TO FOCUS
The Rugby Union earned the ridicule of the sporting media this week for coming to the staggeringly obvious conclusion that it might need to focus on the fans - or "drive fan interest" to quote their particular brand of marketing speak.
Perhaps NZRFU executives have been spending time in the Telecom corporate box at Eden Park because the struggling telco delivered a similar revelation on Tuesday.
Telecom announced that long serving executive Simon Moutter will take on a new role as "chief transformation officer".
Moutter's responsibilities will include "leadership of the wide-ranging change programmes that aim to transform the Telecom Group by embedding customer focus, enabling new technologies and delivering productivity benefits."
Let's say that again ... "embedding customer focus".
If this is the kind of fruity, left-field thinking that Paul Reynolds is bringing here from the UK, then let's have more of it.
* Liam Dann is editor of the Business Herald
