Standard Life backs M&B in boardroom tussle

http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news.ma/ViewArticle?R=85284

... "these arrangements should be transparent and should not detract from the principles of best governance practice as they apply to publicly listed companies"... except of course, in the case of the activities of pubcos, where such expectations of corporate behaviour do not apply due to the stubbornly continuing existence of the anachronistic, utterly discredited supply tie.

Be objective; think of the status quo like this:

If you were reading, say in an Iain M Banks novel, a description of a society on another planet and it detailed how the tie is REALLY applied, as opposed to what BBPA SAYS it does on our planet, you would be reading of a society with a medieval outlook, where people are held in bonded slavery by systems they were deceived into willingly buying into, where such practices are considered pedestrian and a clever form of commercial activity designed purely for the extraction of profit for the benefit of faceless corporations and their super rich investors.

If it were not real today, writ large on the pub industry with a heritage timeline giving it spurious unprovable validity stretching back to the earliest days of brewing, the tie could only exist in fiction - or in the UK.