BP shareholders need protecting from David Cameron

Call that a national champion? BP is a curious business to receive such a flattering title, via government protection from takeover. Its standout achievements in recent years have been dumping 200m barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico and allying itself with a business linked to the Russian state, invader of the Crimea.

What other internationally unappreciated UK institutions will David Cameron choose to exalt next? The England football team? Class prejudice? Or bad dentistry?

The PM's intervention strikes a further jarring note by commandeering private property rights. The UK has no "golden share" in BP, as it does in Rolls-Royce or BAE. To protect BP from a bid, Westminster would need to make energy supply an element in national security.

We can impute two motives to Mr Cameron in extending the traditional rural welcome "Get off my land!" to any would-be foreign bidder for BP, of which ExxonMobil is the most-mooted candidate. First, it is simpler than driving trespassers off with a spot of muckspreading mid-bid, as he did with Pfizer's abortive tilt at AstraZeneca. Shell's takeover of BG has fuelled speculation about consolidation, says Panmure's Colin Smith.

Second, there is an election, apparently. Mr Cameron cannot stop Romanians from relocating to Ipswich. But he can look tough by scaring away foreign investors.

At this febrile time, ownership is increasingly the plaything of vote-hungry politicians. Labour proposes disenfranchising investors who buy shares after a takeover announcement. The Conservatives plan to let tenants buy their homes without the consent of housing associations that built them.

BP shareholders have paid for the right to determine the company's future. The government has not. It is Mr Cameron, rather than Jonny Foreigner, who should hop it.

Aberdeen anguish

St John gave his apocalyptic vision oomph with descriptions of a smoking abyss, a pale rider and a star falling from the sky. Bearish hedgies have confined themselves to shorting shares in Asia-focused fund managers. Vintage Petrus evidently makes them more pragmatic than the saint, who may have ingested magic mushrooms.

Crispin Odey is chief among Mayfair's prophets of doom. The pioneering hedge fund manager expects collapsing eastern markets to tip the world back into recession. He has accordingly sold 6.4 per cent of Ashmore and 1.5 per cent of Aberdeen in expectation of their shares dropping. About 16 per cent and 8.6 per cent of these fund managers' free floats have been sold short, according to Markit.

The insinuation in these short positions is kinder than a belief that the company's management is clueless. Aberdeen, for example, is a skilled Asian fund manager in the view of pundit Mark Dampier of Hargreaves Lansdown. Short sellers probably just think Martin Gilbert's group specialises in a product so dangerous that it would be transported in lead-lined vessels if it were a physical commodity.

Shares in asset managers offer geared exposure to the markets in which they specialise. Their overheads stay the same, at least temporarily, even as their assets balloon or deflate in response to fluctuating stock prices and fund flows. Bears are presumably shorting Asian stock index futures too, though less visibly.

Gearing cuts both ways, though. Investors betting against Man Group had their pips squeezed after the asset manager rallied under French boss Manny Roman. Man is also a hedgie. Or to put it another way, bears lost money selling shares they didn't own in a company that was making money selling shares it didn't have either. St John had some disturbing visions. None of them were quite that weird.

Winging it

Directors tempted to buy a corporate jet should order a diamond-encrusted ice bucket for the boardroom instead. Private jets have greater capacity to prompt controversy, as illustrated by the ousting of Anders Nyren from Swedish investment group Industrivarden.

Moreover, depreciation on a diamond-encrusted ice bucket is close to zero, as De Beers would point out.

Tesco squirmed last year over owning five aircraft. Mr Nyren was kicked out after it emerged executives and their families at an Industrivarden subsidiary were allegedly using its jets as casually as Uber taxis.

Uber also offers helicopter rides. These may suit the reputation-conscious exec for short hops. Ultimately a longer-haul version of ride-sharing app Lyft is needed.

A jet would start from London bearing Sir Martin Sorrell, pick up Bernard Arnault in Paris and divert to Mumbai for Ratan Tata before proceeding to Japan. Parachutes could be provided for passengers who, tiring of Sir Martin's opinions on the world economy, elected to bail out en route.

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