TNAG-1078-FCO40-1328-Policy-of-the-Hong-Kong-Government-on-television-services-1981 — Page 57

VERNON

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We did give this a lot of thought because as you say the company has been losing money and there seems to be no very good reason why it should have been. Perhaps there will be some difficulties to see what should be done and how to turn it around, and we recognise that it won't necessarily be possible to turn it around in the first three months, or the first six months, or in fact the first year. However in arriving at that decision to participate we considered very closely the history of performance of the two partners that invited us in. I should

say that as a general rule, if we are moving into an area we would like ideally to operate on our own if we have the expertise. If we don't have the

expertise and we are going into a new area, we want to be very careful to select partners in whom we

have a lot of confidence. We knew the track record

of both David Syme and Henry Jones and we were sure they would perform. There was no question in our minds about agreeing to go in with David Syme and Henry Jones because they both have a very good track record in Australia and they were partners that we would be happy to be associated with. Because we ourselves have a good reputation,

the same as our proposed partners, we wanted to be very sure that we would be able to go in and make

a success of this new venture. We also appreciate that we are moving into an area which has a different environment to Australia and has different cultural activities and therefore may need a different approach in television viewing.