Analysts last week descended on Yum Brands in Shanghai with a volley of tough questions after billionaire investor Dan Loebsuggested the US fast-food chain consider hiving off its Chinese operations.
The annual Shanghai investor conference, scheduled long before Mr Loeb’s intervention, came as the fate of the woe-laden China operations of the owner of KFC and Pizza Hut is uppermost in investors’ minds.
What Mr Loeb dubbed a play on a “unique open-ended middle-class growth story in China” is valued at $20bn-$22bn by analysts. But the view from the streets is rather less gung ho, with restaurants as likely to be stuffed with thrifty grannies as the upwardly mobile middle-class patrons referred to by Mr Loeb.