Foot and mouth disease now ’a fashionable excuse’ among ailing businesses
Foot and mouth disease is fast emerging as a ‘fashionable excuse’ among businesses looking to explain their poor financial performance.
At least, that’s the view of the UK’s Financial Times newspaper, which last week noted a growing number of businesses citing the disease as major reason for their woes.
Drawing on research conducted by the media monitoring agency, Romeike, the newspaper claimed businesses far removed from agriculture were now using the disease to explain away their problems, with Avis car hire, P&O and Ryan Hotels being among the worst offenders of the previous couple of weeks.
According to Romeike analyst Chrysanthy Pispinis , it is not just the disease’s status as an ‘Act of God’ that makes it so attractive as a financial scapegoat.
"It elicits an emotional response from people," said Pispinis. "Because foot-and-mouth has been played as a sentimental issue in the mid-market press, with photos of people crying and kids losing their pets, it reaches an affectionate part of people, not their reasoning."
However, the leather trade was spared such criticism. Referring to profit warnings previously issued by Nike and the British leathermaker Pittards, the newspaper concluded that the leather industry was one of only a very few that can fairly claim to have been hit by foot and mouth. The industry’s close links to agriculture, and the obvious correlation that exists between leather production and the availability of hides, were the main reasons cited.
Nevertheless, Mrs Pispinis predicted that foot-and-mouth would remain in vogue as a fall-back excuse for troubled companies. She said managers who "fear that their profits aren't going to be good for whatever reason" were expected to let their concerns about the crisis be heard as a "contingency plan for the future".
