Comment: BSkyB talks are opening a Pandora's box

`There is, apparently, no limit on what the committed football fan is prepared to pay. A good deal for football clubs then, or some of the top ones anyway, but is it such a great one for BSkyB?'

At the end of the day, David, it's only fair to say we're really over the moon on this one. And well they might be. The possibility of pay-per-view being introduced early for top football matches sent share prices among the quoted clubs soaring yesterday. It is not hard to see why. Just as the introduction of subscription television was great news for the Premier League, allowing football clubs to charge hitherto undreamt of sums for television rights, pay-per-view is going to be even better.

Some of the figures being talked of yesterday may be an exaggeration but there is no doubt that top clubs stand to get a lot more out of pay per view than the present all-embracing contract with BSkyB. There is, apparently, no limit on what the committed football fan is prepared to pay. A good deal for football clubs then, or some of the top ones anyway, but is it such a great one for BSkyB? That it is assumes BSkyB can both maintain its monopoly of the League and make stick the 50/50 split in revenues between club and distributor proposed. To pull that off is going to require some fancy footwork by Sky, for once the League begins to fragment into club by club deals, it will grow progressively harder to keep control of the show.

Until recently Sky held all the cards. Though others tried to snatch the Premier League from Sky's grasp, the outcome was never in any doubt, for Sky is the only broadcaster capable of reaching enough viewers - 4 million potentially - to make the sums add up. The strong likelihood that pay-per-view, rather than bog standard pay-TV, will be the format of the future has meant that the advantage is swinging away from the distributor and towards the rights holder.

Up until now Sky has prospered because it was the only game in town, controlling all the sport and movie rights and extracting onerous terms from content suppliers desperate for carriage. That will not be true when cable reaches critical mass, and when (or if) digital terrestrial television is introduced. Furthermore, as soon as that nice Mr Blair frees up BT to offer broadcast TV, there'll be another powerful competitor in the market place. BSkyB has a head start and the best developed plans for digital TV of any company. Moreover, Sky already has a subscription TV contract with the League, so unless regulators force the pace, it doesn't for the time being have to go down the pay per view route. By talking to the clubs about doing so Sky is opening Pandora's box. There is every possibility that pay-per-view will usher in a flood of new competitors and undermine Sky's present stranglehold in the process.

GUS goes on a shopping spree

The top brass at Great Universal Stores was apparently expecting the company's shares to fall yesterday on news of its pounds 1bn Californian swoop. That they rose instead was due less to City admiration for what GUS had done, and more to the fact that this slumbering old giant had done anything at all. Good old Gussie's has become so notorious for inaction that first reaction could only be one of elated astonishment. Surely not GUS, not pounds 1bn, not in America?

This is a dusty old company that has not done a sizeable deal in 30 years, squirreling away pounds 1bn plus in cash as a result. It has never tapped the market for new equity and never had any borrowings of any significance. It has never even had a finance director, preferring a treasury function instead. But suddenly strange things are happening. It all seems to be down to the new man at the top. While he has the same name as the last two, Lord Wolfson of Sunningdale, also chairman of Next, doesn't seem to belong to the same family. He has pledged a more open relationship with the City. Analysts were even granted an audience yesterday. A public relations company has been hired to spread the gospel according to GUS far and wide. And now he's gone out and spent the group's entire cash pile in one go.

A new man in a hurry with a big balance sheet behind him is generally a pretty deadly combination. Furthermore, when a company has been "asleep" as long as GUS has there's every possibility of accidents as it arises from its slumbers. And when so many UK retailers have come a cropper in the "graveyard" US market, how can we be sure GUS will fare any better?

But for the time being the new Wolfson at the helm perhaps deserves the benefit of the doubt. Credit rating and information services are growth markets. Putting Experian together with GUS's existing CCN division will create one of the largest companies of its kind in the world. Knowledge of what everyone eats for breakfast and the like is apparently a valuable commodity among the world's leading multi-nationals.

Lord Wolfson makes a good case for this takeover and the markets are with him. For his next trick, he will need to deliver better performance in the core home shopping division, which was the cause of May's unprecedented profits warning.

DTI should surrender golden shares

When it comes to using its golden share in privatised companies, the Government's track record has proved decidedly patchy. So it should be interesting to see how Ian Lang reacts to British Telecom's request that the Government should either give up or substantially alter its right of veto over what happens in the telecoms industry.

The general policy of ministers has been to issue these things a bit like Blue Peter badges and then leave them to gather dust in the attic until some upstart Johnny foreigner comes along wanting to buy a piece of the British industrial landscape.

In the case of Jaguar, which was supposed to be protected from foreign takeover for five years, the golden share turned out to be made of baser metal. The Government gave up its special share as soon as the first suitor, Ford, motored into view. However, when another US predator tried to sneak up on National Power from behind Mr Lang lost no time in raising the golden share to his breast, thus sending the rotters packing.

On that occasion, the logic was that the electricity generation market was not fully open to competition. If he applied the same criteria to BT then the golden share would have to stay in place since BT still controls more than 90 per cent of the market.

There is, however, a big difference this time around. It is BT which is forcing the issue, not an overseas predator. BT thinks the protective arm of Mr Lang needs removing from around its shoulder if it is to persuade the Americans that they should have no objection to the takeover of MCI.

The added complication is that if BT's golden share is removed, the same will have to happen to Cable and Wireless. BT's sheer size may deter all but the biggest bidder but C&W, capitalised at pounds 10.6bn, could be much more easily digested. But if the DTI really believes in all that rhetoric about Britain being in the van of liberalisation, then it should surrender its golden shares in both companies.