Morris Material Handling is not to be sold after all. As we report in this issue, the banks that have lent money to the company have decided that instead of forcing it into new ownership, their interests are better served by taking ownership of it themselves – a debt to equity transfer.
Now one can look at this in either a glass half-empty or a half-full kind of way. On the one hand, no one came forward and offered a sufficiently attractive deal. The books can’t look too pretty then, one could surmise. On the other hand, the bankers are sufficiently impressed by the work that Jack Stinnett and his team are putting in that they reckon it is worth sticking around. They are not yet ready to cut and run.
While we can have our own view on whose judgement we trust more – the successful materials handling companies who walked away from the opportunity to buy Morris/P&H, or the bankers who started this mess in the first place – we should all welcome the continuance of Morris as an independent company.
Consolidation may have promoted efficiency in the industry, but would it have enhanced competition? We have said it before, Morris and all its subsidiaries around the world remain good companies and there is no reason to believe that the group will fail to rise again once it has adjusted to its new circumstances.
