Your take on the Promotor versus competitors was very interesting.
My take would be as follows.:
Promotor got into exhibitions by subbing transport for Bannon Intl who were a leading exhibition contractor mainly in Eastern Europe in the late 70’s. Peter Calderwood saw an opportunity to take over their business and set up Promotor as an exhibition contractor by taking over Bannon’s customers, a slightly devious venture but perfectly legal in a capitalist society. Bannon were very badly run by Bob Glover who was naive enough to believe that his subcontractors wouldn’t screw him. He had a couple of excellent managers in the form of Martin Hudson and Paul Flannery. I was sales manager at F.G.Hammond at the time and was looking for transport business and approached Bannon who virtually welcomed me with open arms having lost out to Promotor. We formed a joint venture for the Baghdad and Tehran International Fairs and the feeling was that they wanted to get their own back on Promotors’s perceived perfidy.
At the first Baghdad Fair I was on site with Paul Flannery and Phil Pugsley, having secured about a third of the business, when we got the news that Bannon had filed for bankruptcy. Martin Hudson had already left owing to the severe downturn in their business and was out in Baghdad at the time working on the Metro contract. That night we all had dinner together at one of the mazgouf restaurants. I had already established that F.G. Hammond were willing to take on the responsibility for the show and they were busy in the UK dealing with our customers. Paul announced that he had a job waiting when he returned to UK but we all worked hard to make the exhibition a success and we organised the return of freight to the UK.
We also had to take on the upcoming Tehran Fair and Martin’s contract at the Metro had expired and he had returned to the UK and offered to help us as he had (via Bannon days) a contact with an exhibition contractor in Tehran run by a Swiss guy called Markus Sprecher. We took another third of the British exhibitors at this exhibition and Promotor had most of the rest.
While sharing a room with Martin at the Hilton (Esteghlal) we saw an opportunity to start our own company to capitalise on Martin’s expertise in exhibitions and mine in overland transport.
On our return to the UK, I left F.G. Hammond and with Martin formed Orient Transport Services. That was 1985. Over the next few years we took more and more of Promotor’s business in Tehran and Baghdad to the extent that in the end we completely took over the major exhibitions including the internationals, the health cares, and most importantly the Oil and Gas.
So the story ends in Promotor’s demise and the revenge of Martin Hudson and Paul Flannery!