nm5405: okay so we've got these er so what wh-, what we're doing to just explain is we're having three people and they-, they're each talking about a short question so er i don't know whether it make sense maybe if i if i read out what the question is er so we'll have Phil to start with okay so the question is the bus industry is often oh i'll i'll wait for Phil right so Phil's question is the bus industry is often viewed as being perfectly competitive yet the competition authorities in the UK have found substantial evidence of anti-competitive behaviour collusion and merger activity why might this happen sm5407: thank you when the UK bus industry was deregulated as part of the nineteen-eighty-five British Transport Act which allowed operators to compete freely i-, with provision of local bus services outside of London previously there was no direct competition on any routes and deregulation removed this legal barrier to entry er the main reasons why you might want to deregulate an industry from a natural monopoly fr-, from a monopoly to a competitive industry would be to increase social welfare so by introducing competition the welfare gain will be this area here this triangle so what happened after deregulation well there was only ever competition on a limited number of routes that only three percent of routes immediately and nine percent after one year suggests that many routes may be a natural monopoly or that there's significant barriers to entry if the industry's er a natural monopoly i'll do my little curve it might look something like that so there'll be no the er at this point here which where profits would be maximised there would be normal profits so there would be no incentive for anybody to enter on the so on the routes where there was competition the key trends were an increase in the number of bus kilometres from entrance er the total number of bus kilometres approximately doubled er so this led to a thirty to forty percent reduction in waiting times but fares remained at a similar level as all new entrants used their the standard distance fare related pricing structure which you would probably expect competitive routes there to be price falls but i think before deregulation there was quite a lot of cross-subsidisation stuff like that but tha-, this didn't really happen there was no major increase in patronage so basically there were more buses but less people on each bus and the mai-, the result of this was substantial pre-competition profits on the competitive routes were wiped out the main peak of competition was around nineteen er nineteen-eighty- eight and since then there's been increasing evidence of anti-competitive behaviour collusion and mergers so why might there the industry be viewed as being perfectly compe-, competitive the main assumptions of perfect competition are a large number of buyers and sellers homogenous product perfect information no barriers to entry and the result is price equals average costs over here that would be there competitive outcome er in practice perfect competition never exists but there's two results which give the same result of price equals average cost which would be the Bertrand model or a contestable market in the Bertrand model you need at least two firms and so the main assumptions which we could question er to discover whether this is actually a Bertrand model firstly the Bertrand model assumes one-shot game but i would have thought that realistically the bus industry is more likely to be an infinitely repeated game played over and over again er no switching costs well i'd say there especially for regular users they buy travel cards so they sort of get tied in to one particular bus company the Bertrand model assumes no product differentiation although a bus journey from A to B is relatively homogenous you could there are vertically differentiating service quality for inst-, er for example by having nice new buses or horizontally by a different timetable and and slightly different routes er the model assumes no capacity constraints which is probably not true because there's only a limited number of buses and there's only a limited number of limited amount of space on each bus although in the long term you could buy more buses and expand the capacity also there would be significant barriers to entry which would prevent new firms coming into the industry for example firms have to commit to service for at least six weeks if they want to enter and they also have to recruit and train drivers and adminis-, administrative staff and set up all the initial timetabling and things like that they also require infrastructure such as storage space for the buses and office space and probably the most important part is one is that they actually have to buy the buses or if they don't buy them they have to lease them which it involves signing a contract for a certain amount of time also er incumbent firms er like to have a reputation in that people know their routes they know the timetables so when a new firm comes in they have to inform people about which routes they take and their their timetable things like that er the contestable market model only requires one firm er so price will be again is equal to average costs the main theory is that you only need one firm because er because average costs because they're regulated they're forced by the threat of entry to price average costs nm5405: okay sm5407: er the main feature of this type of model would be no barriers to entry and that incumbent firms reacted to entrants with a non-zero time lag so but i've already outlined the potential barriers to entry so perhaps a contestable market and a or a Bertrand model is probably not a particularly realistic representation of the bus market but i think that they're you know the Bertrand model or the contestable market model would be why the bus market might be viewed as being perfectly competitive er so why do we actually observe anti- competitive behaviour collusion and mergers well er for anti-competitive behaviour i think that er you the firms need some sort of market power er the barriers to entry can give them the potential to have that market power i mean e-, e-, example in the bus services to Coventry the it's more expensive to go to Coventry at five o'clock at night than it is at lunchtime so the fact that firms can use price discrimination er reflects that they may have some market power so if the firm has market power then it can use it can er use things like predatory pricing where it would price below cost to drive entrants out of the market and then when the entrants have left they can price at monopoly level er there's certain advantages for the incumbent firms which would allow them to do this for example they may cross-subsidise from monopoly routes because er on er on cer-, certain routes which are a natural monopoly they would make some they could make some profits and then price below cost on competitive routes to drive the competitors out er the incumbents also have the local knowledge so they may er get more passengers as a as a result of that er because because people know their routes their timetables things like that which could benefit them er and there-, there's also the possibility of some sort of er pre- commitment to keep to fight entrants as in the Dixit model which we talked about last week er collusion er for collusion to be to exist it must be credible and sustainable so er the er game must be er infinitely infinitely repeated which i've already talked about it probably is so collusion can probably take place in this industry er there are a number of factors which facilitate collusion in this industry specifically all new entrants seem to adopt the existing standard distance related pricing structure which if there's a a standard structure for prices is much more likely to aid collusion er there are relatively few firms in every industry there's only no more than two or three firms on any particular route so collusion's much easier to sustain with a small number of firms cause there's less likelihood of somebody cheating and it's easier to get everybody to join the collusive agreement er employees from competing firms may have previously worked together before deregulation in a monopoly situation so there's scope for potential information exchange and also there may have been relatively weak regulation of the bus industry because the markets are very they're small and localised er becau-, er prior to deregulation of no information on firms so it er it took them time to build up a profile of firms which probably meant that they were slower to react than maybe they would have done er for mergers to take place there must be cost savings er i think in the bus industry there are there's probably quite a lot of economies of scale for example it's much more efficient to run one bus that's full than two buses that are half-full within five minutes of each other it's probably qui-, quite strong failings from that which are er which is er possibly a reason why i would expect mergers to be quite popular in this industry also if firms are colluding then they are already maximising joint profits so it may make sense to merge so there's no incentives to cheat or anything like that also there for this to take place i think the barriers to entry are necessary because if a firm merges to act as a monopolist any other firms could come in and sort of er start competing with them or they come in and break up any cartels and things like that that's it nm5405: okay thanks Phil er i mean the-, there are a number of issues that i wanted to raise does anyone you know are there things that some people want to su: er doesn't it matter er or isn't it important what we define as an industry because er perhaps there isn't actually a bus industry nm5405: mm mm su: perhaps it should be defined as a transport industry nm5405: right su: because buses are competing against er cars and trains as well nm5405: mm mm su: and therefore within the bus industry you know you can't really er expect to see so much competition nm5405: okay so the competition is between the bus an-, and the car or or bicycle or or whatever rather than rather than within buses yeah that that's er yeah i guess that's that's right although i mean you might i mean you might there are obviously examples of competition within buses themselves i mean like the buses from the university to Leamington for example where there are two companies er incidentally there was a time when there was a third company for a short period but it was driven out by the other two companies su: mm mm er i don't that we can put the bus the train and the cars in the same field i think that each of them has its own niche of market nm5405: mm mm su: and they i think at a certain point i mean for example yeah we have a bus from to Coventry Birmingham but we have also a train but we certainly don't have train from here to the centre of centre to the university so and the car is more oriented for er both people had wealth to buy a car nm5405: mm mm su: well i can see from here from Coventry that er the people that most uses the bus are elderly people and student people nm5405: mm mm su: so they are oriented to this kind of people so i don't think there's too much competition among this kind of firms nm5405: right yeah i mean er well i guess it's certainly clearly a a question of market definition which is quite a tricky issue which often comes up in in terms of er sort of competition policy ju-, just sticking with the buses a bit er you you said that one of the problems was that you had to buy the bus okay er why might that not be a problem or what may what may make that a relatively small problem su: because er it's not really sub-cost is it cause you can always sell it er nm5405: yes i mean i think that's th-, the people who thought of the industry as being competitive essentially viewed this the market there being a big second-hand market in buses and therefore er that it wasn't a big problem if you if you bought a bus because you could always sell it or you could re-lease a bus for a period and that of course there you've got a position where there where there are economies of scale in the bus because you know the carrying more people doesn't necessarily mean having another bus er but er but at the same time the costs are not necessarily sub or very small proportion of the costs sm5407: you-, you'd need a lot of capital to buy the buses in the first place nm5405: well yes or or as you said you could lease the bus couldn't you sm5407: yeah yeah but then you'd still have to si-, probably sign contracts but nm5405: for a period of time sm5407: yeah yeah nm5405: yes and one of the main things that was seen as a problem in in many of the early investigations of this was was facilities like bus stations because you know often it depends where the bus station is but often you want the bus to go into a particular place in town and if one company owns that and won't let the others in then that that can be a problem er anyway so er yeah so i think er i mean you i i think otherwise th-, the point you made the points you made about contestable markets were good i mean that that was the view often taken was that the market would be contestable er but as i said briefly in the theory lectures the idea of contestability itself is problematic and i think you're right to point out the problems there is there any other things that people want to come in on on on this su: you mentioned about buses from the university to Leamington nm5405: yeah su: i'm living in Kenilworth actually and but i'm taking the twelve West Midlands nm5405: yeah su: i don't dare to take West Midlands if i come to Leamington from the university because it's much faster it doesn't go through Kenilworth so in that sense i think the product is perfectly differentiated nm5405: well some of them go through it yes you're er no i can see tha-, that they do do different sorts of things yes and again the point you made about travelcards you travelcards used on one can't be used on the other anyway er er in some ways of course it's rela-, there are some links between this and airlines so maybe maybe we should come on to Fred and er airlines okay do you want to come up or do you want to stay there well this so er Fred's doing number ten why do some airlines honour the air miles of fre-frequent flier scheme of their competitors sm5408: er first of all airlines each route being a different product a journey to New York is not the same as a journey to Paris for example so this er sm5408: er so this difference cost structure, quality of services, and the set of projects they are supplying the introduction of liberal bilateral agreements has given rise to greater competition both in price and in quality attributable as a new entry or increased price competition among the incumbent carriers and their agree-, the agreement gave greater incentive to improve efficiency with increasingly exploiting the cost advantages such as lower unit costs or er larger economi-, economies of scope and the incumbents enjoy important advantages derived from the control of airport facilities such as such as the control of computer computers' reservation system and some other and some other ancillary services but on the other hand entrants may also successfully penetrate the market if they enjoy some cost advantages such as er lower wages that allows them to offer lower prices and on the er regulation these incumbent flight carriers have large market share because of the legal framework and under liber-, liberal bilateral agreements er the same firms er nm5405: maybe you should explain what liberal bilateral agreements are cause i don't think everyone will know what they are sm5408: er in fact er the majority of tourism er are throwing er company airlines company to er to supply some er some nm5405: well may-, maybe i-, i'll have a go and explain and then you tell me whether i'm right okay sm5408: thanks nm5405: so you know the-i-the idea is that that between any two points like say London and Amsterdam the governments can decide rather than having specific carri-, carriers between those points they can decide to a-, allow any carrier or an-, any of a range of carriers to fly between those points so that's a bilateral agreement because it's between two-, two particular airports er and this is the way in which competition in scheduled airlines first took place within Europe through these liberal bilateral agreements sorry carry on sm5408: er under regulation these perfect collusion regulation makes cheating impossible and entry is totally banned under the circumstances there are few incentives to increase the but after the liberala-, liberal-, liberalisation firms start acting independently and competing in price firms try to export their cost advantages such such as lower level cost and large-, larger economies of scope as a result some new some competitor-, competitors have consolidated their position leading the industry towards a more fragmented structure er er there is some occurrence of huge airlines in the world er at the moment airlines sought to sell tickets to a wider range of destinations without actually flying to more so they conclude agreements between them to increase their network of destinations but airlines in a in a an alliance sell each other flights in an blocks of seats on each other's aircraft by combining network airlines can feed extra traffic or onto their trunk routes on with economy of scale the bigge-, biggest airlines are for example Lufthansa, S-A-S, United Airlines, Ti-, er Thai Airways, er Varig with er number of destinations equal to seven hundred and six sixty seven and number of passenger of er two hundred million people one world is the biggest one with British Airways, American Airline Iberia Comtess and Cathay Pacific this alliance represent twenty five per cent of the North American market with British Airways and American Airline with a number of destination equal to seven hundred seventy eight and two hundred ten million of passengers there are also other alliance such as these firms produce multi-products er some of which are substitute but the majority are concurrent within an alliance people can go er in er each continent these alliances began a series of loose arrangements to share cost and direct passenger to partners' flight frequent flier programme now it is beginning to look more like merger with share executive facilities alliances alliances manage capacity on some routes we might expect reduce-, reduced competition to lead to higher fares but on the other side the alliance partner can by practising cooperative pricing whereby they seek to maximise the benefits to all the members this lead to lower fare for the whole journey is there a danger is there a danger with these alliances the risk is that the airline business may be moving from one extreme of regulation on state ownership to another of global consolidation with little or no exposure exposure to competition in between although customers sometimes complain flying on a different airline from the one they thought they were booked on but most passengers seem to quite like them too but the main benefit benefits of alliances clearly accrue to airlines not their customers business class fares have risen even faster since airlines became fashionable the airlines retort that passenger they really mean business travellers benefit from the combination of frequent fliers programme and easy connection they also they also prattle on about passengers being able to use the same terminal on launch on and over the wide range of destination alliance alliance do not deliver the welcome consoli-, consolidation that happens in the other industry such as car or computer in which the strongest and fittest companies survive and the weakest go under instead they allow airlines to collude protect weakest one each one from closure and usually increase barriers to entry to entry from newcomers who cannot hope to match their global network of destination there is er the trick that airlines have pulled to achieve all this is to win exemption from anti-trust law in exchange in exchange for their acceptance of open sky agreement and er to conclude what will happen for the outside air outside like Virgin Megastore will be will they be marginally marginalized in the new world of alliances nm5405: okay thanks Fred so er his answer essentially is that that they they honoured their frequent flier scheme or air-miles scheme of their competitors because they're not true competitors in a sense they're they're part of an alliance well if you were forming one of these alliances wha-, what sort of firms would you want in the alliance er would you think yes but what would you try want to try and construct in the su: a worldwide sort of network nm5405: okay yeah so who would you want to avoid to put it the other way round su: direct competitors people flying to the same destination as you nm5405: yeah yeah well i i think probably that that's largely not entirely true that's largely true of the ones you talked about isn't it but what they want to try and do is they get like an airline in a strong airline in Europe an airline in the US and an airline in Japan Australia somewhere like that er so that they they can provide any coverage of routes er and maybe one or two other smaller players er i mean i i guess er er although a question is what is there anything wrong in this and and you you suggest in a sense that this was reducing competition do you think it's reducing competition or or not su: well there can be a competition between different alliance groups like nm5405: mm mm right er so i mean how wou-, how would you decide on on this whether it's er whether it's essentially a a move to make a an anti-competitive move or not su: i don't know i think it's a sort of peripherally competitive er at least partly we can't say this is this is not the monopoly or not it can be monopolistic but er su: but a strange thing is that er flyer scheme the frequent flyer schemes seems to be to decrease the elasticity of demand nm5405: mm yeah yeah su: that's that's it's proposed i mean if you have or if i have already twenty thousand miles for yeah but this company is more expensive yeah but i have it so i will keep with this company nm5405: yeah su: that seems to be the the proposal of this scheme and if the other companies are honouring this scheme well th-, there's contradictions so what's the purpose then i think the the the impact of the the elasticity of demand is no longer valid nm5405: well it depends it depends who these other companies are i mean if they're part of the same alliance then then they're helping to keep the customer within that particular alliance group aren't they sorry Michael sm5409: by holding the alliance you also have that maybe the companies wouldn't start stop competing on the routes but they will organise the routes so that you can have er easier transport from one place to another without waiting times at airports because you could say okay we have two flights today and one is K-L-M and one is whatever S-A-S nm5405: mm su: and they could work together so they would have one every twelve hour nm5405: mm mm su: and then they could always see that their passengers get from one place to another as fast as possible and thereby increase service nm5405: mm su: and still keep up competition kind of nm5405: mm mm well but yeah er sorry su: no i was just going to say doesn't it actually er open up the market a bit more and that's why the firms do it like er for instance say er if someone wasn't ever considering going flying from here to Malaysia and then they've got er airmiles or whatever nm5405: yeah well i i mean i guess as as with many of these things there are sort of two ways in which you can increase your sales one way is by capturing sales from your competitors and another way is by by getting new customers and and i guess you're talking more about the second type yeah su: or you can er recrea-, decrease costs by er by trying maximise cause we're back at the bus problem we'd rather want one full bus running nm5405: yes su: than two buses half-full nm5405: yes yeah sure su: so here we can you can maximise your er organise your your flights so you maximise the number of passengers by also working with other companies and you thereby reducing the cost of flying which will also reduce the costs of flying for the customer nm5405: mm mm yes it's interesting actually er er because these industries are very different but actually similar sort of arguments were made about the airline industry when it was originally deregulated in the United States that it it essentially they only only ever got a small number of competitors the market could nevertheless be quite competitive er because in in the same way that you can lease a bus you can also lease a plane er what partly it is what the companies have done is is having recognised that they've thought of ways of differentiating themselves er but but as as you say they they it's not but with the alliances it's it's it's not clear whether that's a competitive or an anti- competitive move anyway maybe we should leave that one there thanks Richard we'll move on to er Nicoletta who's doing the the last question suppose a particular oligarch of industry needs consolidating what pattern of mergers would you expect for example would you expect the largest and smallest firm to merge or the largest and second largest sf5406: well er first of all i want to introduce why firms er merge because er we have seen lots in last lectures that er merger can also lead to er losses and so why do some firms merge well there are er there is a reason that is anti- competitive so to reduce competition in the industry or there is another reason that is er er that er for example the anti-, anti-competitive could be when er the the firms have the same margin of costs and are constant while er if er the firms have different costs margin of costs and er they we are in a Cunard model and there is the possibility that merger can rationalis-, rationalise the production and so we can have scale economies or there is another reason that a merger can create synergies among the firms merging and er we have seen in the in the in the past lectures the mainly er a model by that showed us that there can be losses and so er i think there could be er the anti-competitive reason in this case but there are other views from other er other authors other economists that they say for example i can't remember the name of i think Porter and er well Dempsal er they er take the the case er of a different product that each firm produced different products er in this case i forgot to say we are speaking about merger hori-, horizontal mergers because there are conglomerate and vertical mergers and er er for example mm they they Dempsal and Duerney i don't know how could i to spell it nm5405: oh i mm Denecka sf5406: Denecka demonstrated that er they they could can claimed that in the first merger they can gain if they are producing different products and then they still produce the s-, the products after the merger and er also there is er Perry and Corder demonstrated not always that mergers can lead to er losses in the in the joint profit so losses in the profit after the merger compared to the profit of the two firms before the merger and er what i tried to do is to demonstrate that but i'm not sure if it's going to be right the the the er because the question is if the er if er we expect in an industrial consolidating er if we expect that the largest and the smallest firms merge or the largest and the second largest and er i think they're going to merge the the er biggest and the smallest is it true or it depends on our nm5405: i think it depends a bit sf5406: or it depends on on er on my assumption okay well er i have made some assumption er there are there are three firms in the market so er three firms and er another assumption is that they face er a demand er an inverse one this is the total output and er that they have different marginal costs so they have different marginal costs and mm because i think an equilibrium in a Cunard model er if er we have bigger firms er firms because they are er they produce more than others it's because they they are more efficient efficient and they have er lowest er margin of costs so i can say that er this is the biggest one so the the output and er and er and from this implies that er should be the margin of costs is er er should be smaller than er this relationship that holds it starting from an equilibrium a Cunard equilibrium and er now er i have taken into account given this assumption er the profit of the the firm i should be one plus the sum of the margin of costs of er er G and er minus M-C-I the number of firms and er all squared and this is the number er so i have calculated this for er joining because i didn't know okay so for example if i calcu-, i have calculated for example the joint profit for the biggest and the smallest nm5405: mm mm sf5406: and er it turns out to be er margi-, these are all marginal costs er C- A and the number of firms now er plus one there are three because nm5405: okay is that C-O there er er what's this sf5406: this is C-A nm5405: yeah and and sf5406: because er i suppose that er nm5405: well what's this one here oh C-B sf5406: C-B yeah is a yeah nm5405: okay yeah yeah okay sf5406: this is the medium-sized firm and er now there are two firms in the market of course one and then er i'm supposing that er if er the small-, smallest firm that has the highest marg-, margin of costs is going to merge with the the because they they can share i don't know the expression the production and and so on i suppose that er it's going to produce er mm with the same margin of costs as the biggest firm and then er we can do the same er taking the er the the biggest and the second biggest so we have T minus two dot three so if we are going to compare the joint profit we can see that they only defer in this in this term and we know that this is bigger er because the margin of costs of the smallest fir-, firm is er is bigger and er and so this er this quantity because we are adding this quantity is er the the profit of A- C er what i have done i'm getting to another conclusion nm5405: yes no i i er er your your argument's right i think but but but you've come to the a differ-, different conclusion yes so sf5406: yeah i've done something oh yeah yeah i don't know i could i could have noticed okay so well how strange okay so it must be that er er that this is smaller er oh so i don't know why but so from this mm mm from this moment must seem that er the biggest and the second-biggest are going to merge but i have er i have found different economic er reason a new interpretation of the model but in the other way round so now i'm a little bit confused which way i have to nm5405: right sf5406: i don't know is it right is it nm5405: well i i i think what sf5406: reasoning is nm5405: yeah i think i think the reasoning you've got here is right actually er this this is what i i had expected i i i'm afraid i hadn't calculated it in this sort of way but when when you think about what's going on here you're you-, you've now got two firms after the merger okay in both cases you have two firms after the merger but in the in the case where A and B merge they they have the low costs and the other one has a relatively higher cost in the A-B case than in the A-C case where the the one that hasn't merged has got an intermediate level of cost and so you would expect in the A A A-C sorry in the A-B case that that firm would be relatively larger sf5406: yeah nm5405: er and so it would be more profitable okay sf5406: yeah because i i have been thinking about er er er mm about what could be the reason of er er the biggest one merging with the lowest with the with the smallest one and i i thought about i don't know if this reason could be something sensible or not so but i thought that er er for example er if they they merge because whe-, when merging they are going to to to lower the output because they they lower the output because they don't face competition nm5405: right sf5406: among them and so they can lower the ou-, ou-, output to in order to increase the price but then in the in the model that we have seen with Sarent er if the reaction of the outsiders the the the industries the the firms that are not going to merge is saying they they er the outsider is going to take the part of these er er i don't know to produce the the output they are going to produce nm5405: mm mm sf5406: and er and so a bit complicated er and-and so in the in the case that ther-, is there is the smallest and the the the largest they they produce less the output because there is there is less competition between the two well there is less competition nm5405: mm well yes sf5406: for the for the biggest nm5405: mm but i but i sorry does someone else want to say something no i i guess that's why i say that that it i think it depends on the precise model but i think given given the Cunard model which is a good place to start i mean i think i think actually you were very sensible to look at it in this way sf5406: yeah nm5405: er given given this model the conclusion would be that A and B would merge if now if they were if if if these were differentiated products in some way it's not i i think that you the argument that you were putting just then related sf5406: more more nm5405: to me more strongly to to that sf5406: to that no nm5405: mm what's happening here in both cases we've got a duopoly afterwards but in in the A-B case then this firm is the A-B firm is relatively favoured compared with the C firm sf5406: yeah i found it difficult er nm5405: did you sf5406: to demonstrate my previous results su: now you know why now you know why sf5406: er thank you yeah okay so well i demonstrated nm5405: okay any-, anyone want to say any say anything else about anyway so i think i mean given given a model er or given this particular model i think we can come to a fairly firm conclusion on on this er on this question er i mean but then of course as as as i-, im-, implied it it it that is rather model potentially rather model dependent i haven't i mean it would be rather more difficult to er to work out i guess what would happen in in in differentiated product cases but er okay anyway that was a nice model for you sf5406: i don't know nm5405: okay anyone er anyone want to say anything else on that okay good anyway so then er just to remind you then so er Jorgi you're doing a paper on Thursday oh you haven't got one of these have you so i'll it's just a few notes i gave out about er about about talking about so you're going to do the Rees Paper sm5410: mm mm nm5405: is that right and then then on Friday Zubin's going to do the Wolfen paper sm5411: er no nm5405: no ah i thought you were going to do Wolfen sm5411: no i was going to do the other one er the re-, no the er nm5405: okay fine right okay and so then er you know to in order to fit as many people in as possible it would be good if we could have if we could carry on with three sessions a week for the last two weeks is that okay so then maybe Ma- , Manuel will be this time next week is that okay sm5412: yeah nm5405: on Haslow and Martin and then sm5412: i have no option nm5405: so then and then er i want well i want to get some other people for for the other papers next week su: vertical nm5405: the vertical bit yes well i cut the vertical bit a bit short but er no okay er so who should who who wants to does anyone want to volunteer for another paper or shall i make some suggestions for other ones for next week er well i say i still want i'm still quite keen to get someone to do the Genisoave and Mullins paper su: its such a long paper nm5405: is it okay well may-, maybe i'll have to do that one er nm5405: Genisoave and Mullins the er now which other ones would i would quite like to do er i think it might be quite interesting for someone actually sm5409: do you know what put me off the Genisoave one nm5405: okay i was just going to say Michael you it might be interesting for you to do the Winston and Collins one sm5409: okay nm5405: er the the reason being that that it it it's an event study which you've probably done something about sm5409: okay i'll do that thanks nm5405: er you you've probably done something about that in finance er and so it that would make sense for you to talk about that one i think sm5409: okay nm5405: er so maybe now so i-, i'd like to fi-, er fix someone else up for next week as well sm5409: when is it that due Wednesday afternoon er nm5405: well it'd probably be better that'd be best for Friday next week er so maybe if i could pick someone else out for Thursday next week er people stoically looking away er su: can i take nm5405: er no Nicoletta's doing that i'm afraid er er well maybe maybe i'll do Genisoave and Mullins next week then okay so i'll do that on Thursday next week just to er and then er we've still got a few fix-ups for the following week but we'll do that hopefully on Thursday okay there you go