How appropriate that the terms of Marc Bolland’s recruitment to Marks & Spencer (LON:MKS) were announced on the last day of the football transfer window.  M&S is paying a £7.5m fee to attract him from rival retailer Wm Morrison (LON:MRW).
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So now we know the price of principles. Less than 10 per cent. For an extra  £1bn from Kraft Foods, Cadbury’s (LON:CBRY) directors have melted like Dairy Milk on a warm day and crumbled like a Flake bar.
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When companies need a new leader, why do they so often call in the City headhunters and search for external candidates instead of promoting from inside? Is it because the internal applicants’ faults are known while the unknown outsiders offer hope?
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The new corporate governance code to come in during 2010 will make a major concession: it accepts that boardrooms have become stuffed with independent amateurs, leaving insufficient executives who understand the business.
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It’s hard enough finding good non-executive directors but now the regulators are looking at how they can be voted off the board as soon as they are appointed. The new corporate governance code could include annual re-election for all non-execs.
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Women in boardrooms is usually seen as a sexist issues. It’s not; it’s about xenophobia. Selection committees are not anti-women but anti-British.
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Corporate governance codes make much of non-executives’ independence nowadays – so it is surprising to see one of our biggest property companies putting a director of one of its biggest customers on its board.
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That Reed Elsevier (LON:REL) has changed its chief executive is noteworthy, but not as much as the fact it has replaced a British manager with a Swede. Foreigners now account for 42 FTSE 100 boardroom seats: before long they will have a majority of the top UK corporate positions.
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Now that Kraft Foods (NYSE:KFT) has made its hostile bid for Cadbury it is worth remembering what a hostile takeover offer is. It is one that the directors reject – not necessarily one the shareholders oppose.
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For decades to come, Debenhams (LON:DEB) will be a business school case study. It is also the story of the 21st century boom and bust - bought by private equity, loaded with debt, floated expensively, shunned, an Icelandic target, forced to raise new capital – and now the private-equity funds have exited.
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