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The headquarters' power source in another major Scottish company looks like it's getting unplugged, both exiting the country and the transparency of the stock market.

Bosses at with the Northstream property and ports consortium bidding to buy it. They have to, because that same consortium owns 27% of the company already.

And there is a unanimous rejection by Forth Ports' directors of the tabled bid. But the language from the Leith-based company is clearly not opposed to takeover.

Yes, its annual figures come with a statement saying it has strong prospects for delivering continuing shareholder value. It has to say that as well.

But the statement has the look of a company hoping for a better price for takeover, rather than preservation of its independence.

As with Venture Productions, taken over by Centrica last year, here's another of Scotland's top 20 companies with its corporate power going elsewhere.

It might make you wonder what happened to the talk of "economic nationalism" which was voiced when Scottish Power was taken over by Iberdrola. A similar national interest argument came chocolate coated when Cadbury fell prey to Kraft.

We heard calls for it to become more difficult to take over British companies, which presumably would have to apply to British predators as well, including an invitation from Business Secretary Lord Mandelson for views on the subject.

One of the responses is the Association of British Insurers pointing out the fees made from takeovers are themselves a very large incentive driving the process.

Docks down

That said, the Forth Ports results brought some interesting reflections on the state of our trade.

Of course, lots of trade is carried out digitally and by air freight (Edinburgh's tonnage up substantially last year) . But shipping ports, including five locations on the Forth, another on Tayside and the huge Tilbury docks on the Thames Estuary, tell their own story about the collapse of trade last year.

Sharply down were container movements in and out of Grangemouth. It handled 139,000 boxes last year, down 11%.

Likewise, the harsh decline in construction can be seen in port movements, with timber supplies down more than 50% and iron and steel down nearly 30%.

For similar reasons, at Leith, grain, aggregates and cement fell sharply, but steel pipes and coal tonnage were up, leaving its totals the same as in 2008.

That steel pipes element tells you something about the growing business in offshore activity, particularly in the construction of renewables kit. Leith, says its owner, is being considered as a base for a renewable energy construction yard.

So too with Dundee, which had notably little activity with its volume down by 20% on 2008 - and 60 acres of spare land, ripe for development as a "renewables park".

By building four biomass plants at its sites that Forth Ports also hopes to get into its own niche of the renewables boom.

At Tilbury docks, its container services division had a "very disappointing year" - down a whopping 19% to a figure that remains a whopping 278,400 containers.

It's as clear a picture as any of last year's exports crunch.