A public-relations coup it was not. On December 25th the 2,727 staff of City Link, a courier firm, learned that their employer had gone into administration. Some, it was reported, had been assured that the business was sound just a day earlier. Stories of ruined Christmases soon filtered into the newspapers; including that of an entire family-Mick Ward, a driver, and his two adult children-facing unemployment following the company's failure. On December 29th, as the first redundancy notices went out, workers demonstrated outside a depot near Glasgow. The story has big political ramifications. "Meet the Tory grinch who sacked 2,700 people on Christmas Day," ran a headline in the Daily Record, a newspaper-a reference to donations to the Conservative Party by Jon Moulton, the swashbuckling founder of Better Capital, the private-equity firm that had bought the company for £1 ($1.56) in April 2013. Unions suggested that Mr Moulton had asset-stripped City Link: having funded the £40m of subsequent investment in it with secured debt, he could yet recoup up to half of that sum. But straightforward hubris may be a better explanation for the failure. The loss-making firm had cost its previous owner £3oom in the six years before Mr Moulton acquired it. He did so as competition from bigger, low-cost rivals and price wars between retailers-City Link's customers-were intensifying.
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