A sweeter offer from Menzies’ Gulf raider should seal the deal

A sweeter offer from Menzies’ Gulf raider should seal the deal

Menzies can rhyme either with frenzies or grimace. Pronunciation depends on how to approach yogh, a Middle English letter that by the 15th century had fallen out of use everywhere except lowland Scotland, where it was swapped out for Z on the arrival of the printing press.

Fortunately for finance news balladeers, the battle for ownership of John Menzies has yet to require their services. Hauling cargo around airports lives lower in the public imagination than aerospace engineering, where any change of ownership raises national security concerns, and jet servicing, which is considered a high quality business deserving of national protection. The only refrain to be heard around Menzies has been about whether the predator, Kuwaiti-owned peer National Aviation Services, will stump up enough.

This, therefore, is the familiar tale of UK markets failing to fully value an unglamorous business then squealing when a foreign raider turns up. NAS’s last proposal of £469mn, or 510p a share, offers a 76 per cent premium to the undisturbed price yet will almost certainly need to be improved. The board of Edinburgh-based Menzies has refused to engage, calling the approach “entirely opportunistic”. Its two biggest shareholders, Sterling Strategic Value and Mithaq Capital, who together hold