Remember The Diana Effect? For months after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, every badly run company in the land took the chance mendaciously to blame the tragedy for their woes.
Coronavirus will surely be seized upon by the same duplicitous brand of bosses seeking to use external disaster to excuse their incompetence.
So, fist bumps to Intu for not taking this well-trodden path. The fact is, its efforts to raise £1.5 billion were doomed long before the virus took hold, and it gives the bug nary a mention today.
The fact is, investors were never going to chuck more good money at a bad business like this. Shopping malls have fallen in value by nearly a third since 2017 with no sign of a let-up. The Trafford Centre alone fell the thick end of half a billion quid in the past 12 months.
So, what next for Intu, with £4.7 billion of debt, £109 million of equity and a customer base made up of retailers, that structurally screwed group who can now genuinely put coronavirus on their growing list of sorrows.
Well, shareholders are an irrelevance, so the question is, what will the banks demand? Fire sales? Hopefully not. Prices are falling fast enough without sticking “distressed sale” on the front lawn. Besides, a flood of Intu centres coming up for sale will make the market even worse.
No, this is time for calm. Trade the sites through the virus, perhaps splitting them into a good-mall-bad-mall structure, and break it up gradually.
It will be nerve-wracking for the bankers, but panicking will only make their losses worse.
