In all the fuss about the departure of Bob Mackenzie as chairman of the AA for gross misconduct, it is easily missed that the fourth emergency service, as the AA likes to think of itself, accompanied this with a nasty warning on this year’s performance.
This is what drove the shares back by 34½p to 210p on Tuesday, though yesterday they rallied mildly, up 1½p at 211½p. They were floated at 250p in June 2014, laden with £3.3 billion of debt by the AA’s former owners, the private equity groups Permira, CVC and Charterhouse. It is fair to say that those owners, as well as running up that level of debt, had not invested in the business as well as a careful owner might have.