Talk of "synergy" was absent from this week's eyebrow-raising decision by British florist group Flying Flowers to add international stamp dealer Stanley Gibbons to its asset collection. Market jesters however dismissed any further UFO sightings over Britain as flying stamp albums and speculated about stamps making way in Gibbons's albums to displays of dried flowers. The publicly-quoted florist is acquiring Stanley Gibbons Holdings for £13.5 million, wholly satisfied in Flying Flowers's shares. The business logic of the deal is difficult to grasp. In the age of the microchip, stamp collecting has a certain nostalgia value but is declining in popularity. Stanley Gibbons's had a turnover last year of £9.7 million, less than half the level in 1984.

Flying Flowers says it intends to move Gibbons into mass market areas. It will add the Gibbons range to its mail-order business, which already includes first-day postal covers and specialist coins. A spokesman cryptically remarked that "many people like collecting things to display, not hide away in albums".