Quote "The one thing MA is good at is its
PR - sucking up to all political parties and getting Geoff's big fingers in many pies. One thing it's not good at is running a day to day operation, at least at a strategic level. Many of the operational managers are quite good but are hampered by the fools above."
As a fully paid up Mancunian (Council Tax) it's quite depressing to read endless complaints regarding MAPLC inability to run an efficient, customer focused business. However, MAPLC is not a genuine PLC, in that shares can not be purchased on the stock market, and is essentially a council owned operation. My experience with any business that has roots in government ownership, be that local or national, is that politics remain the first priority with regards to all decision making - I experienced numerous unpleasant occurrences of business decisions being overturned by Counsellors demands even though the company was a genuine PLC for over 15 yrs.
Back to the 'fully paid up' comment. Looking at MAPLC accounts, my council (Tameside) owns 5% and receives dividends to this amount. In 2007 that was approx 1.25m and presumably keeps my council tax a little lower than it should be. However, it is clear that MAPLC needs to throw off the council shackles and move out of political circles.
So MAPLC strategy should be to avoid looking at other airport purchases and actually purchase themselves!
One last thought. The majority owners of MAPLC struggled to organise a day out for 50,000 Rangers fans in Piccadilly Gardens so what chance of running a major UK airport taking 22mill pax per annum?