Verwaayen finds a way forward

BT has been a public company since 1984. Eighteen years have passed since then, but BT has found it hard to break free from its State-owned heritage.

Layers of bureaucracy have meant decisions have been hard to make and even harder to implement. Wild forays overseas have proved unsuccessful and heavily loss-making, while at home the company failed to take advantage of its dominant position.

The new Dutch chief executive Ben Verwaayen seems determined to change all that. Single-minded chairman Sir Christopher Bland has been preparing the ground since his arrival almost a year ago.

Today Verwaayen hopes to take the preparatory work and turn it into real growth for shareholders, real improvements for customers and real job satisfaction for employees.

His mission statement tells the City exactly what it wants to hear. Out go fancy ambitions for world domination. In come commonsense domestic expansion plans and limited European focus.

The list of financial targets over the next three years is also reassuring and investors will be pleased at the intention to resume paying dividends this year. Verwaayen tells a good story and BT shares have risen sharply since he joined the company. Now all he has to do is deliver the goods.

On the spot

ROY Gardner has just become chairman of Manchester United. His day job is chief executive of Centrica, a FTSE 100 utilities company valued at almost £10bn.

Man U is one of the few football clubs that makes money. Nonetheless, the role of chairman should involve devoting at least one day a week to the company. Centrica shareholders are not convinced this is in their best interests. The group is busy, acquisitive and taking on several new challenges. Gardner is handsomely paid to run it and has done so proficiently.

Corporate protocol does not, however, encourage the chief executive of one large company to be chairman of another high-profile business. If Manchester United were involved in anything other than football, Gardner would almost certainly have refused the offer.

But there is something about the beautiful game that turns sensible men into starry-eyed boys. Hard-nosed investors are wondering if Gardner got unanimous approval from his Centrica non-executives before accepting the Man U job. If something should go wrong at the club, or indeed at the utilities business itself, Gardner may find himself with divided loyalties.

Right lines

EVERY US investment bank in town has cast its eye over Cazenove since chairman David Mayhew turned the firm from a partnership to a company and revealed plans to go public. Initial approaches were robustly rejected, but suitors began to think the firm might be more willing to talk since a trade sale could yield more than a flotation.

Cazenove has put paid to such thoughts with a robust denial of weekend reports that it was in discussions with JP Morgan Chase.

This may not please the greedier members of Cazenove's senior directors, but it will doubtless be greeted with relief by the firm's clients, who include half the FTSE 100 index of leading companies. They choose Cazenove because of its experience, its clout in the market and the relative objectivity of its advice. US investment banks do not have a history of treating their acquisitions sensitively. Cazenove is right to stick to its principles.