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.
The Guinness Partnership of the other main housing divisions in the Group to form a single charitable company operating nationwide, The Guinness Partnership Limited. The Guinness Partnership and Wulvern Housing Limited merged on 31 January 2017. Guinness Care specialises in services for over 10,000 elderly people and people with a learning disability, providing home care, supported living, care homes and schemes for retired people. The Guinness Partnership The Guinness Partnership is one of the largest providers of affordable housing and care in England. As of 2014, the Partnership owns and manages around 65,500 homes and provides services for more than 135,000 people. The