In 1986, Guinness acquired the much larger Distillers Company after a fiercely contested takeover battle. Investigations later revealed illegal share-support operations linked to the bid. The affair became one of the most notorious British corporate scandals of the decade.

The scandal placed an old brewing name inside the rhetoric of 1980s finance, greed, and corporate spectacle. It gives context to late twentieth-century poems and satires that attack Thatcher-era money culture and the corruption of inherited institutions. Poets began to reflect on the moral implications of wealth and the disillusionment with traditional values in a rapidly changing society.