Crossed fingers and low profiles

Late March is traditionally a quiet time on the corporate front. Most companies have done with reporting their half-year numbers and are content to knuckle down and get on with the job of trading out of the winter and into the spring and summer seasons.

The post-winter lull is even more noticeable than usual this year, for obvious reasons. Some companies have battened down the hatches altogether and are going so far as keeping an extremely low profile.

And while some other businesses are quietly expressing the view that the start to the year was not as bad as many had feared and that the worst may - may - be coming to an end there are still a lot of crossed fingers out there.

Intriguingly the buzz on the street, to use a chunk of modern vernacular, is that all is not well with a couple of large pub operators.

Punch Taverns' new City PR firm was happy to robustly scotch a suggestion last week that the pubco's bondholders were meeting to discuss what they should do next, pointing out - fairly reasonably at this point in proceedings - that the company had yet to bugger up two of its securitisation vehicles.

But can the day be far off when some of the bondholders do indeed decide to have a bit of a chat amongst themselves and put in a call to that nice Mr Thorley? This is certainly the view of one industry veteran I spoke to recently.

Then there was the suggestion that the banks of one large privately-owned pub operator were - and I quote - "under water" in terms of their investment.

What will the pub environment, indeed the industry in general, look like if - or 'when', as some prefer to see things - such a theoretical situation becomes a reality? Something to ponder on, for sure…