For the capital starved Zurich, the pressure was to get as high a price as possible.American Express’s interest in buying Threadneedle is one of the worst kept secrets in the City. The less stringent the performance targets, the greater the price that American Express would have been prepared to pay. The other variable is the performance targets, which Zurich describes as “standard”, but presumably were the minimum it could justify to its policyholders. In fact the bulk of the funds under management belong to the seller, Zurich Financial Services, and here the tariff is unlikely to be high.Zurich is a distress seller and has therefore agreed that Threadneedle will continue to manage its funds for longer than is usual in such transactions – eight years rather than five That will have improved the price for Zurich somewhat. At less than 0.8 per cent of the value of the company’s £44bn of funds, the purchase price would look a bargain if this were an entirely retail business. It’s a jungle out there and Sir Martin has a PHD in the law of it.ThreadneedleWhether American Express has secured a good deal in buying Threadneedle Asset Management for £340m is impossible to know without access to confidential details of the transaction. The longer the uncertainty persists, the more destabilising it becomes, the more Cordiant clients will drop into Sir Martin’s lap.

It’s in his interest to maintain hostilities for as long as possible, for even if he fails, Cordiant’s business is in the meantime going to hell in a handcart. Indeed, other secured creditors, including HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland, seem to have been largely supine in allowing Cerberus to dictate the terms and personality of the rescue.As is his wont, Sir Martin was fighting like an alley cat right up to the wire last night. It’s all a bit fishy, because as part of a linked transaction, Publicis has agreed to sell Cerberus some of Cordiant’s assets, including possibly the financial PR company Financial Dynamics.Cerberus thus has an interest in agreeing the Publicis terms that goes beyond that of other debt holders in merely securing the best possible payback of capital. Bad move, for when push comes to shove, the whip hand always lies with secured creditors, and chief among these is a US private equity and hedge fund group called Cerberus, which has irrevocably pledged its controlling position in Cordiant’s senior debt to Publicis.

What makes this a curiosity as a bid battle is that it is one conducted among lenders and bondholders, rather than shareholders.With both bids, shareholders end up with a pittance, much to the fury of Active Value, which has built up a big stake in Cordiant in the hope of extracting a value-enhancing deal for equity holders. Without WPP and the alternative suitor of Publicis, WPP’s French rival in the global advertising market, Cordiant would in all likelihood be heading for the insolvency courts, such was the degree of its debt-fuelled overexpansion as the advertising boom reached its zenith (no pun intended). Cordiant is such a busted flush that it’s beyond the stage of being able to chose its partner. Yet even the remorseless Sir Martin knew he had an uphill struggle with Cordiant Communications, which, as with most of his targets, would much prefer to be taken over by someone else.
In this case, that’s the least of WPP’s problems. Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, generally gets what he’s after once he sets his heart on something, even if it means overpaying, as happened with the media buying agency Tempus. The house broker cut its profit forecasts for the current year (on the basis of rising insurance and national insurance costs) and the shares dipped 15p to 132.5p.At this level they look reasonable value, have a dividend yield of 3 per cent, and will be attractive to those investors who believe in a swift economic rebound..

In the 12 months to March, pre-tax profits rebounded to £6.1m from just £913,000 last time.Wyndeham has also closed three of its 12 printing plants and its confidence in the future – and its strong cashflows – allowed it to raise the dividend payout. This printer of magazines and leaflets owns Argent, one of the country’s best printers of glossy magazine covers, but Wyndeham has until now made very little effort to suggest that Argent’s salesmen should encourage the buyers of the glossy covers that they could get the whole of their mag printed by Wyndeham too.So corporate rebranding and cross-selling has enabled Wyndeham to pick itself up from the horrors of last year, when the advertising slump meant magazines shrank in size and Wyndeham’s profits correspondingly shrivelled. Locking in profits never hurts, but the stock is still one to keep in the cellar.Wyndeham adds a little glossThere is one thing to be said for a bracing economic slowdown: it forces companies to take a hard look at the efficiency of their business Take Wyndeham Press. Corporate sales now account for 27 per cent of the total, up from 25 per cent.This column has raised many a toast to Majestic’s shares over the last couple of years, and they rose 14p to 605p yesterday. Its customer base rose by 23,000 to 294,000 and the average spend per transaction rose to £104 from £102. That pace has continued since then, with sales most recently running 8.1 per cent ahead of 2002, despite being up against the tough comparatives of the Golden Jubilee celebrations.Profits before tax and goodwill soared 38 per cent to £8.3m on sales up 20 per cent at £125.7m.