Solid values at Marks & Spencer

Comment

Other retailers come and go but Marks & Spencer just soldiers on and on, still growing, still thriving, still, after all these years, winning awards for the excellence of its management and service. Few brand names have proven as successful or durable; few companies as dynamic and crisis- free. With annual profits now within a whisker of the pounds 1bn mark, past problems in the US falling away, and the future set fair, the achievement looks even more impressive than usual. Absolutely remarkable, as David Coleman might say.

Yet the stock market's verdict is a rather different one. Over 10 years, M&S shares have done no more than match the rest of the market, and notwithstanding yesterday's buoyant reaction, they have underperformed over the past year. Other retailers seem to be more favourably looked on.

There are good reasons for this. M&S is now so large, and such a bellwether of domestic consumer spending, that however inspired and innovative its management, it will always be hard-pressed to deliver anything more than average growth. Even so it must irritate the hell out of the chairman, Sir Richard Greenbury. His opinion of most retailers, and of the analysts and journalists who follow his stock, is notoriously low. Woe betide anyone who dares write about this great British institution in anything other than flattering terms. Cantankerous and prickly, Sir Richard would dearly love not to be answerable to the City at all. He would prefer M&S as a private company.

Sir Richard's personality is his own, but his approach to the world may explain a little about the company's success. Its emphasis on quality, its investment in staff, its attention to service, its state-of-the-art management and control systems all tell the same story. They are about care, love of the business and the people who make it work and, of course, determination to build something that will endure across generations.

M&S long ago ceased to be a family-run or controlled company but it maintains many of the best characteristics of such concerns - paternalistic, risk- averse, determined to serve. Ten years from now, M&S will still be there and growing. Many of those whose shares now sparkle will be be seen as no more than passing fads, and badly managed ones at that.