Shareholder Executive

Step forward the Shareholder Executive. Created in 2003 to improve the financial performance of public sector businesses that governments hoped eventually to be able to privatise, it was hardly set up to preside over the commanding heights of the UK economy. But that, ironically, may well be its fate, assuming the government’s offer of a £50bn recapitalisation of British banks finds takers among the likes of Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and Barclays. This little-known corner of Whitehall, charged with overseeing a motley portfolio of 29 companies including nuclear group Urenco, the Met Office, the Ordnance Survey, the Royal Mail, the Tote and Channel 4, could morph into something analogous to the highly political state holding companies that sprang up in post-war continental Europe. Think, for example, of Italy’s... [read full story]