ANNUAL meetings of our food companies have a tendency to get down to the nitty-gritty and certainly provide a lot more entertainment value than most of the po-faced Dublin-based companies. Last Monday's a.g.m. of the Kerry Group in Tralee was no exception.

Armed with a battery of slides, managing director Denis Brosnan went to great pains to explain how the group had fared in the past year, and how the ingredients and foods businesses were forging ahead. Two hundred shareholders, including the assembled suits from head office listened attentively, but the issue of the co-op giving up control of the group was the top item on most shareholders' minds.

The most direct question to Brosnan and finance director Hugh Friel came from one shareholder who wanted to find out, in plain language, whether he should give the group shares he's going to get to his seven daughters and his co-op shares to his one son.

"Don't do anything rushed or wild," was the response from Friel, who explained the minor difficulties this shareholder would face in the form of penal capital acquisitions tax rates.