Guinness led to a scandal and criminal trial concerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case "Guinness plc v Saunders", in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA's bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo.
What the Rose did to the Cypress and drank. A faqir asked him what he did there. He told him his story and asked the faqir's, repeating when the faqir put him off, until the faqir told him he had been a king, and his seven sons had all tried to win a princess whose hand could only be won by answering the riddle, "What did the rose do to the cypress?" and died for their failure. His grief sent him into the desert. This inspired the son with a love for the same princess. His attendants found him and brought him back, but he grew ill