Will Sir Ken Morrison’s five decades at Wm Morrison end even more sourly?After an impeccable record

Will Sir Ken Morrison’s five decades at Wm Morrison end even more sourly?After an impeccable record since the Bradford-based supermarket group floated in the 1960s, Morrisons has lurched from bad to worse since buying the ailing Safeway. They should focus on getting Euronext to pay a full price for the LSE.Name the day, Sir KenLord Hollick’s three decades at United Business Media came to a sour end last week with a shareholder revolt. The European regulators would not like the deal because it would give Euronext more than 90 per cent of the derivatives market; Euronext would not want the B?’s settlement business; and the LSE is still the biggest cash equities market in Europe, and if there is going to be consolidation, it has to be part of it LSE shareholders should not worry about these B? rumours. Not only has it been the most valuable and most liquid investment, it has been the only one to deliver relatively solid profits without surprises. Unlike most quoted football clubs, it does not have a dominant investor – a problem that has blighted Aston Villa and Newcastle United to the point that shareholders’ democracy barely exists, and is now troubling Tottenham Hotspur.

In truth, it is probably the only quoted football club that has justified its listing Now it is going, will all the others please follow suit. The football sector is as sick as a parrot and should be as dead as one.Get Euronext to pay upThe London Stock Exchange is another business sitting in God’s waiting room. Having received bid approaches from Deutsche B? and Euronext, the process was put into abeyance by a Competition Commission inquiry, which is not expected to come to a conclusion before September.Meanwhile, the B? bid has been broken into pieces, largely through the actions of two hedge funds. Both the chairman and the chief executive of the B? quit last week.

Needless to say, the B? is no longer in the market for the LSE. But is Euronext?Market rumours suggest Euronext might turn its attentions to buying the B?, leaving the LSE on the shelf But I think this is off the mark. Not a great place to be, but better than it has been for some other football investors.United has been the beacon for the football sector on the stock market. Shareholders United, the group that claims it has over 20,000 United fans who oppose Mr Glazer’s bid, says they will do everything they can to block him. They claim to speak for 18 per cent of United’s shares, though I suspect the block isn’t that solid. However, probably enough United shareholders will say no to Mr Glazer for him to fall short of the 97 per cent he needs to force them to sell to him.This will leave an uncomfortable rump of minority shareholders in a private firm controlled by Mr Glazer. So don’t write off Italy at all – and go and spend some money there this summer to help pull it out of recession..

This afternoon Manchester United travel to the St Mary’s stadium to play Southampton. The game means nothing to United, who will finish a disappointing third in the Premier League for the second season running, but everything to Southampton, who are fighting relegation. Southampton Leisure, the quoted parent of Southampton, is an illiquid, undesirable investment which (like almost all the 20 clubs that at one time or other were listed in the UK) probably should never have been introduced to the stock market and certainly should not still be there. Those shareholders who have stuck with the company will have seen their investment lose three-fifths of its value in the past year.United will almost certainly depart from the quoted market shortly after Malcolm Glazer secures 75 per cent of the shares for his £790m bid. As he was on 74.8 per cent on Friday night, we won’t have to wait too long. And you can see it in the number of highly qualified young Italians who have left the country to work in the UK and US.Set this alongside such delightful innovations as the “slow food” movement – where cities turn their backs on the US market-driven approach to economics (and fast food) and plump instead for leisure – and you might believe that pleasure and efficiency cannot co-exist.Mercifully, there is a much more positive case to be made First, the problems of Italy are quite specific. Couple that with the clear areas of excellence of Italy – in high-tech engineering as well as the better-known dominance of fashion and quality craft industries, and in tourism – and you can make a case that strategically the country is well-placed It can do so many things other countries can’t.

Italy has an exceptionally small proportion of people of working age actually in jobs.Because it is easy to identify these problems does not mean it is easy to solve them, but it is a start. And part has to do with taxation and benefits, which encourage early retirement and discourage people from entering the labour market. Part is regional, for the efficient north still has to subsidise the less-efficient south. Part is structural, for Italy has been relatively slow in building up the new service industries to replace the inevitable decline in manufacturing. Economists who are more bearish about growth expect a sharper fall in rates. For example, Roger Bootle, writing in the latest Deloitte Economic Review, thinks growth this year will be only 2.0 per cent, but he also thinks that interest rates could be as low as 3.5 per cent by the end of next year.Meanwhile, it is going to be a twitchy few months as people come to terms with the new cooler economic climate There are three things to watch. One is what is happening in the shops, the bars, the airports and so on.