Listing a bit

Exchange. As manufacturing industry has been declining fairly rapidly in

the past 20 years, so the number on the list has been shortening.

As a barometric indicator of the economic climate, generally, it has

tended towards ''wet and windy''.

Informed judgments are that the number of Scottish companies with a

Stock Exchange quotation probably is about 130 at most. About 115 of

these are truly classifiable as in manufacturing industries. The others

are investment companies, banks etc. which have multiple listings that

bring up the total to well over 300 in the whole mixture of stocks.

Scottish companies, generally held to be trading in commodities (tea,

minerals, rubber etc.) were weeded out in most cases nearly 20 years

ago. Much the same happened with ''shell'' companies which had cash

rather than productive assets. They may have had a ''little list'' of

their own (potential acquisitions) but not a place on the Stock Exchange

list.

However, the so-called ''Yellow Book'' of the Stock Exchange in London

is being revised at present and we may gain a clearer idea of who is

truly Scottish by July of next year. The consultation period has just

begun and Nigel Atkinson, head of listing there, wants it concluded by

February 12 so that responses received can be evaluated and revised

listing rules published.

Argyll tartan

ARGYLL, the food and drink group, has had its own tartan created.

The Diary was the first to bring you news of the special single malt

whisky, ''Auld Acrimony'', it bottled, first simply as a sardonic

commemoration of winning large damages from Guinness after losing to it

in the famous battle over Distillers and then, because it was so

popular, for commercial sale.

Connoisseurs now will be able to buy not only that 12-year-old but the

15-year-old Argyll, which is to mark the group's anniversary of its

founding. The Safeway stores will be selling it and it will carry the

new tartan on its label, I'm told.

David Webster, the deputy chairman, admits: ''It has to be said we do

still regret losing Distillers.'' But it seems that they are turning

their withdrawal symptoms to commercial advantage -- although I don't

know what the Duke, himself director of a whisky company, may say about

that name and that tartan.

The big picture

SCOPE Picture Productions, the Glasgow-based company, sent a team by

air to Japan on Thursday, to record material of Scottish Ballet's tour

of that country for a promotional video to be shown to supporters and

prospective sponsors.

Even as Dave Turner, one of the founding partners in the company, was

waiting to board the flight with his crew on Thursday, Malcolm

McCalister, the other founding partner, had clinched another valuable

contract from the Billy Graham Organisation in the USA.

Scope, as the Diary reported a week ago, made a series of Television

programmes in Russia about the Billy Graham Crusade there, which was for

transmission across the whole of the former Soviet Union. In addition,

it made a number of ''guidelines'' videos for counsellors and others

involved in the crusade.

The organisation was so pleased with the results and the technical

expertise shown that it has now contracted Scope to send a team to

America for the production of training videos for its people there.

Iain Morris, who did much of the work on the ground in Russia and is

already well-known to the organisation, will be leading a unit to the US

early in the new year.

Check in

UP for sale, as reported five months ago, is the Devonshire Hotel in a

smart part of Glasgow's West End, the place just down the terraced block

from One Devonshire Gardens, fronted and founded by mine host Ken

McCulloch and backed by smart, City money. Lord Lichfield, as you may

remember, presented One Devonshire with its award for the Best Hotel in

Scotland for its inclusion as that in the Curvoisier Book of the Best.

The Devonshire Hotel, the other place, was splendidly refurbished

after being funded by a Business Expansion Scheme company, which had

raised #500,000 for that company. Unfortunately for the subscribers, who

were looking for the customary personal tax relief, the Government

decided to phase out BES arrangements. Some of them wanted to part

company with it and go elsewhere with their money.

The original selling price was about #750,000 but the Diary has caught

wind of a suggestion that right now it could be much less than that.

''Half-a-dozen hoteliers of quality'' are believed to be interested in

it as well as some other potential buyers who are wanting only the

property.

As the hoteliers tack up the tinsel and lay out the Christmas

crackers, there is concern among some of them that the new Hilton in

Glasgow may be about to precipitate a price war in the city.

Troubled waters

SUBSIDIARITY? Don't mention it to me, even if I did know precisely

what it meant. Subsidies I have some knowledge of, though I'm not a

French farmer or any kind of flag-burner.

I remember when the trades unions in the platform construction yards

in this country, supplying Britain's offshore oil and gas industries,

regularly got suspicious, if not irate, about ''foreign yards being

secretly subsidised by their governments''. They were allegedly taking

the bread from British workers' mouths.

Britain recently got some platform work for the Norwegian sector of

the North Sea and I note a question from E. Moland, a left-wing

socialist member of the Storting. It is to the Norwegian Energy Minister

and it asks what the Minister intends to do with the threat to Norwegian

yards as a result of subsidies given by UK authorities to offshore

fabricators.

The question continues: ''It is said that up to 12% of the hourly rate

is subsidised. In addition, the weak pound is giving British companies a

15-20% advantage.''

Tennis set

STEWART Clark, the man in charge of the Glasgow office of chartered

accountants BDO Binder Hamlyn has an important decision to make now that

he has reached the age of 50. Not a professional one, you understand,

but a sporting one.

Stewart is a member of what is known as The Circus, a group of about

15 Glasgow business men, who play tennis at Newlands on Saturday

mornings. It was started in the early 1970s by Glasgow lawyer Bob

McCallum and chartered accountant Derek Mann, who is now retired from

BDO.

Earlier this year, they staged an over-50s v under-50s tournament (the

young lads won while the veterans of the accountancy profession,

naturally and appropriately, shouted at them: ''Get some service in!'').

The under-50s, I'm told, however, will have a job making up the team for

the next tournament in February.

Thus, for purely sporting reasons, Stewart has decided that he is

still under 50.

Incidentally, the members of The Circus have for some time been

entertaining the idea of jetting south to the sunshine of Spain or

Portugal to have one of their tennis matches.

But the oldest member, Dave Sommerville, aged 66 -- the Sommerville of

the erstwhile Glasgow advertising agency, Arnott Sommerville -- has just

bought a house in Florida with its own tennis court attached and he

plans to sojourn there for six months of the year.

And he hasn't even been seen coming out of Clydesdale with a newly

bought Hoover washing machine, either.

Midas Mac

REDUNDANCY payments may now be only a memory to some of the

Lanarkshire men who lost their jobs in British Steel and British Coal in

the 1980s. Sir Ian MacGregor, who was chairman of both at different

times, continues to pick up a few farewell tokens, even though he is now

80. He has been in and out of more chairs than Goldilocks ever since the

days when he exhibited the courage of Mrs Thatcher's convictions.

The latest was announced by Hunterprint, the specialist printing

company. In August he was ousted fron the chairmanship of it and the

other day it was stated that he had agreed to a farewell present of

#320,000, which included #35,000 for fees and legal expenses.

I could get by on that in Craigneuk, not to say Manalapan, Florida,

where he bides.