Outlook: The cable guy plays a Knapp hand and switches from NTL

Well, it's been just wonderful for me, that's Barclay Knapp by the way. But, hey, how was it for you? The answer, Barclay, rather depends on where they are coming from. For shareholders in the cable company NTL who lost everything in that $11bn debt-for-equity swap of yours, catastrophic would probably be the right word. For your fellow "associates", thousands of whom valiantly sacrificed their jobs to keep the Knapp show on the road, not a lot better. And for NTL viewers or RGUs (revenue generating units) as you like to call them? Well, they got used to the unintended freeze-frame when they weren't calling up to find out why the picture had disappeared altogether.

Barclay Knapp, president and chief executive officer, is stepping down after ten eventful years at the helm. But before he goes he would like to thank everyone for their part in his career development. NTL may have been the biggest financial basket case since Eurotunnel, but for Barclay it has been "a whole decade of wonderful experiences and personal growth". Gee, not only did he get to fly around the world in his own helicopter throwing money around like confetti but he also had a ringside seat at the biggest corporate restructuring of the decade. Now that he's finally going with a $2.1m pay-off -a thank you present for helping unpick the mess he created in the first place - Barclay would like everyone to know that he is leaving the business in great shape. It may still be losing £160m a quarter and revenues may be up by less than the loose change in Rupert Murdoch's wallet. But at least things look better than when NTL emerged from Chapter 11 in January. They could hardly look any bleaker. As for the interest bill. Well it's still costing £400m a year even after the banks have taken their pound of flesh, but NTL has some exciting ideas for making inroads into that. In fact, it's what Barclay will be doing in his role as strategic adviser until he switches off entirely at the end of the year.

The big strategic thing, of course, remains a merger with Telewest, the only other cable company left standing, after a fashion. A get together looks about the best hope of making a real profit from all those billions of pounds the two cable companies have thrown down holes dug in the road. But, even then, whether it will be enough to give BSkyB and BT a run for their money is anyone's guess. Sky has just run off with football rights for the next three years and its digital gamble has paid off handsomely as yesterday's sparkling set of results demonstrates.

With the expensive egos of NTL's Knapp and Telewest's Adam Singer both now removed from the picture, one big obstacle to a deal is out of the way. Once Telewest has got its own financial restructuring in place, it can surely only be a matter of time before Charles Burdick sits down to talk turkey with the new man at NTL, Simon Duffy. Unless Mr Duffy has got something totally left field in his mind such as a tie up with his previous employer Orange.

As for Barclay himself, the very next thing he is going to get into is a pair of swimming trunks and some sun tan lotion. After that, he can embark on the next decade of personal growth. Who knows, with his combination of brio, enthusiasm and quick wits he may even find someone prepared to bankroll it as well.

Safeway extension

Just when the army of advisers labouring away on the Safeway bid battle thought it was safe to go on holiday, along comes the Competition Commission with a one-week extension to its inquiry. The delay has been caused by some last minute horsetrading by Wal-Mart, the owner of Asda and the bidder most determined to put Safeway in its shopping trolley.

Wal-Mart is not used to haggling with suppliers. It simply quotes the price it is prepared to pay. However, the American supermarket giant has discovered that the same tactics do not work over here. After Tony Blair opened the door for Wal-Mart to walk in and buy Asda five years ago, the boys from Bentonville assumed it would only be a matter of time before their winning combination of low prices and lack of geographic overlap allowed them to buy another UK supermarket chain.

The regulatory authorities were underwhelmed by the strategy. The Office of Fair Trading was distinctly lukewarm about Wal-Mart's pledge to cut prices by 15 per cent if it got its hands on Safeway and also suggested that the overlap of stores might be twice Wal-Mart's own estimate.

The Competition Commission was not much more encouraging in its issues letter, highlighting the "pro-competitive" virtues of allowing Safeway to merge with William Morrison and questioning how long-lasting the price cuts would be if a duopoly of Tesco and Asda ended up dominating the UK supermarket scene.

This helps explain why Wal-Mart/Asda has held two meetings with the commission in the fortnight before its chairman Sir Derek Morris was due to deliver his recommendations to the Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt.

At the second of these meetings, which took place only last Friday, Wal-Mart by all accounts offered to buy Safeway but then dispose of the majority of its 480 stores to Morrison. The commission already knew what Wal-Mart intended to propose and so asked Tesco and Sainsbury to comment the day before the meeting. Even though their replies consisted of just two words, the commission was still left with insufficient time to deliver its completed report by noon yesterday, despite doing something unheard of for civil servants and working over the weekend.

The commission has now asked for an extension until next Monday "to allow another weekend for any last minute considerations that may slow us down". That's two weekends in a row, so just think of the overtime bill.

After six months of deliberation, analysis and public and private sessions, it is hard to imagine that every possible permutation has not been examined already, which makes the extension something of a surprise.

It must also have occurred to the commission that Wal-Mart's offer is a case of the tail wagging the dog. If Morrison is to be the one which ends up with the vast bulk of Safeway, then logically, it should be the one which is allowed to buy the stores and then negotiates undertakings with the OFT, not Wal-Mart.

Perhaps Sir Derek is simply making sure that he does not trip up on the kind of procedural technicality that invalidated the commission's decision on the Interbrew-Bass takeover. It would, after all, be a low note on which to retire. Let us hope so because if the Competition Commission is to live up to its name, then its priority should be to prevent the big four becoming the big three.

Parkinson's law

A salutory tale from America, where else, concerning the pharmaceutical industry. Researchers at the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Research Center in Phoenix, Arizona, report that a drug used to treat the illness may have the unusual side-effect of turning patients into compulsive gamblers. Dr Mark Stacey and his colleagues studied 1,800 Parkinson's sufferers for a year and, according to their findings reported in the journal Nerology, discovered that of 529 patients treated with Pfizers' Mirapex drug, eight developed a serious addiction to gambling. Two reported losses of more than $60,000. Admittedly, the scientists stressed that the risk of gambling problems in Parkinson's suffers was very small - only slightly above the rate for the population as a whole. But just think of the damages that the class-action lawyers could go after if they sink their teeth into this one.

m.harrison@independent.co.uk