The Vole -- Marina Meeting

A sure sign that the brown stuff is near the fan is when senior managers hold a pre-meeting meeting. This took place well out of the way of the cameras & mikes at Ivory Towers. It appears to have paid off. At the genuine meeting, the MD's usual divide and rule tactics failed, for once he was outmanoeuvred by his underlings.

Instead of a "Whodunnit" the meeting turned into a "where do we go from here" meeting. Spending AV's own money on marina building was soon ruled out. Everyone at the meeting would lose some / all of their bonus if this went ahead. Instead, all agreed, partners should be sought to build these marinas, whilst AV(2010)PLC does the paperwork regarding planning permission etc. The fact that this tactic failed miserably around 5 years ago was ignored of course.

More interesting, perhaps, was the off-the-cuff remark by the Finance Director that AV(2010) Marinas Ltd was a separate business only to the extent that the computerised accounts for it were kept on a separate server!

So there you have it in a nutshell. Separate business, no, separate accounts yes.