Where has Penrose gone?

WHAT HAS happened to Scottish Judge Lord Penrose's report on Equitable Life? The Hutton inquiry is out of the way. Parliament is back in session and soon Gordon Brown will need to give all his attention to the Budget less than three weeks away.

But still the Treasury is sitting on a report that is now two months old and which it has promised to release in its entirety. The delay has become unacceptable.

Up to 1m Equitable Life policyholders, many of them elderly, are waiting with bated breath to know who was responsible for depriving them of their promised comfortable retirement.

Some are running out of time because of their age. If they have to embark on another long process after the report is published, because of the need to show the case for compensation, they may never see their life savings returned in full.

One can only conclude from the delay and the fact that the report has been referred to the Serious Fraud Office that Judge Penrose has discovered something ghastly. This is clearly not a blinkered report in the Hutton tradition, otherwise it would have been released by now.

For the management of the reconstructed Equitable Life, the report must be published so that it can continue to put the company back on an even keel, and protect the interest of its investors and future pensioners. It is as if time has stood still.

All that the Equitable executives have seen is 30 pages of technical material - dealing with actuarial valuations - out of a document that is 800 pages long. Their requests for further information, made personally to Ruth Kelly, the Minister responsible, have gone unanswered so far.

The longer the delay goes on, the more suspicion there will be that a cover-up of administrative incompetence inside the Treasury and the Department of Trade & Industry is taking place.

Under Brown's stewardship the Treasury has earned a reputation for integrity and the promotion of transparency. It would be shame if this were wrecked on the rocks of Equitable Life.

Brunswick unveiled

MUCH OF the corporate news that reaches newspapers comes through the filter of large financial public relations advisers.

It is they who weave and spin companies and the media through the thousands of corporate announcements and takeover deals that take place each year. It is right then that more light is cast on their own affairs.

An important first step is being taken by Brunswick, the financial advisory firm founded by Alan Parker. Brunswick has become a dominant force in the City of London representing a third of Footsie companies.

It has international reach and is acting for Cingular, which pipped Vodafone at the post to acquire AT&T Wireless, for the Barclay brothers in their effort to win control of Hollinger, and for Sanofi in the European pharmaceutical bidding war.

In this capacity Brunswick, a private company, has become a public force worth an estimated £200m. But there has been dissension in the ranks at the way the income has been split, which has led to the departure of key figures such as Andrew Grant, who is now at rival Tulchan.

To deal with this, Parker has finally bitten the governance bullet and incorporated Brunswick as a Limited Liability Partnership based in Delaware where it will have to file its returns, such as they may be. Parker remains in control with 50.1% of the partnership shares. The rest is split among the 44 partners, in the hope that this will provide some continuity and stability.

Hopefully, the veil also will be lifted a little on an area of City activity that remains shrouded in mystery.

Arnold's bad luck

IF YOU happen to be one of the 1.3m Abbey investors who gained their first experience of share ownership 15 years ago, you will be more than puzzled about the implosion that has taken place over the last two years.

A seemingly profitable bank has racked up losses of £1.6bn as a result of foolish expansion into wholesale banking and insurance, neither of which it understood. As a result the shares have been battered, dropping 10% in latest trading alone.

Abbey believes it can turn things around through an expensive rebranding exercise that seeks to portray it as the bank 'which helps you to get on top of your money'.

Chief executive Luqman Arnold has done a good job in cleaning the stables, but I fear he may have more difficulty in putting across a convincing message. A takeover approach cannot be far away.