Nadir faces jail if convicted after 17 years on the run, but the SFO risks its reputation if he is found not guilty.

Nadir headed the textiles to fruit-packaging group during the 1980s when the penny shares soared to £33 and into the FTSE 100, making it the decade’s fastest growing share.

It was never a blue-chip, however, because its accounting practices, governance and transparency posed too many questions and it went bust in 1990. He was charged with 66 offences involving £34m and chose to flee to his native Northern Cyprus rather than face trial.

With that state deemed illegal and no extradition treaty, Nadir has been beyond justice. But that 17 years abroad makes the resumption of prosecution extremely difficult.

The original SFO team has retired or left; witnesses are old, dead or have faded memories of events from the 1980s; records may be lost.

And despite the SFO deal to allow his return – tagged and with his passport confiscated – is the will to find him guilty still there?

The government agency may be ready to prosecute, but will a jury be inclined to convict after so long, when the balance of doubt will go to the defendant and the crime, if there was one, now seems so distant – and even small?

A prosecuting counsel, judge and jury distanced from the excitement of the time may seem the ideal unbiased judicial environment, but if it makes conviction less likely, the defendant has benefited from delaying the case by nearly two decades. Fleeing justice has given him an advantage and disadvantaged the SFO.

And Nadir cannot be convicted for jumping bail, irrespective of whether he committed the 66 alleged offences, because it has now been ruled that the documents were technically incorrect.

A not-guilty verdict will allow Nadir to restore his reputation and permit his free travel to countries beyond those that turn a blind eye to North Cyprus’s status. But it will seriously damage the Serious Fraud Office.

The SFO cannot claim this is an old case irrelevant to its modern functioning when it has chosen to re-open it by agreeing Nadir’s return.

With the odds stacked against the prosecution, it might have been better to leave Nadir trapped on his island in the Mediterranean rather than have him in Britain gloating at the injustice against him. It cannot be fair that by fleeing justice Nadir has weakened the case against him.

Rises of 10 per cent are at the mean end of the scale. The Diageo drinks company raised its final payment by 9.3 per cent, but engineering group IMI is paying 12.5 per cent more; advertising agency WPP has gone for a 15 per cent rise, Admiral insurance is up 17.7 per cent and the Amec services firm’s dividend has risen 19.7 per cent.

Serco raised its payment by 19.9 per cent, despite its reliance on public contracts, and Irish bookie Paddy Power is paying its investors an extra 28 per cent.

There are several even larger increases – such as the 50 per cent at FTSE 100 oils groups Aggreko – but this wide cross-section of UK companies shows no restraint on pay-outs.

The dividend picture is much rosier than the profits they present, suggesting optimism for the future by finance directors.

A third of the companies reporting had worse profits than previously, or even losses – sometimes worse losses – but most companies increased their dividends. Only four made cuts of those reporting in the week before the bank holiday.

The reason so many companies reported at once is the pressure from the Financial Reporting Council to produce results within two months of the end of an accounting period. For companies producing figures for the year or six months to June, that meant rushing them out before the August bank holiday.

Such a flood – including Super Thursday when more than 70 companies reported – is not good for investors but it does create this unique perspective of UK plc.

And the willingness to hand out cash as dividends shows why the government is misguided in trying to force banks to lend to British businesses.

Firms do not want to borrow. They may have cut back on capital spending because of the uncertain future or have improved their margins by squeezing suppliers, but the result is they are flush with cash. They are repaying loans and handing over surplus liquidity to shareholders.

A cynic may think they are buttering up investors ahead of equity issues. Perhaps, but that was last year’s trick and it is unlikely to be repeated next year.

However, with interest rates so low, and share prices still static, the yield on the FTSE is around 3.5 per cent – sufficient to attract institutional buying if these dividend increases can be maintained.

To relatives of the sufferer, such a strict decision may seem insensitive rather than sense: they would think any cost is worth their loved one surviving that much longer.

That’s why Nice was created to give dispassionate decisions but it does not explain why in October 2010 a Cancer Drug Fund is being formed by government with a £50m budget to supply drugs such as Avastin to patients whose doctors recommend it, even though Nice says the spending is bad value.

The creation of a fund to override rational decisions bodes badly for a government that is making billions of pounds of spending cuts. Will it buckle at every protest from groups hit by its decisions?

Several charities that should know better have claimed Nice ought to be overruled too, and many more lobby groups can be expected to ignore common sense – nevermind facts – when they try to persuade the government to restore cuts.

Much of the problem is that the free-to-user National Health Service has left the public – its customers – with no sense of value. Even the people paying for prescriptions have no idea whether the medicines received are worth £8 or £80 – or just 80p.

And most people pay nothing for prescribed medicines or for hospital or clinic treatments so have no idea of the value of the services supplied – and almost no comparison in other sectors of spending to act as a benchmark.

So the public has not had to ask if £20,800 is a good price for six weeks’ extra life. They can compare it with the tax they pay or the cost of, say, private dentistry, but it requires Nice to make the hard decisions.

Compared with a similarly-priced drug that prolongs life for six months, Avastin is poorer value, and in a world of limited resources, it may be sufficiently poorer value to be not worth paying. Nice looks at that bigger picture. And if Roche, the manufacturer, is sufficiently worried at losing the NHS as a customer, it might reduce the drug’s price.

The relative of sufferers could pay the price themselves if they think it good value – though their decision may well be irrational and even regretted later.

But they are unlikely to be medical experts, financial specialists or even impartial. Nice has those qualities and so should governments. So what is the point of establishing a Cancer Drug Fund specifically to be nice when Nice is being nasty? It gives logical decision-making a bad name.

That has not only ruined the summer holidays of thousands of directors and accountants, it also produces considerable bunching of announcements.

On the final Thursday of August alone, more than 70 companies announce their figures to the London stock exchange.

Announcements just before bank holidays used to be used by companies trying to sneak out bad news when no one was watching.

Now the watchdogs demand that companies publish results during this quiet period.

Companies such as Savills or drinks group Diageo that traditionally announced results in September have had to bring them forward to August.

The industrials group IMI announced figures on 10 September in 2001; by 2010 it published on 26 August.

Efficiency and the wish for quicker disclosure means many companies have brought forward results by one day each year for the past decade.

Now that means publishing before the bank holiday rather than after, however – and it creates that “Super Thursday” in what is already a busy week with well over 150 companies reporting.

Once British’s industry closed its factories for August while the workers went on their wakes weeks holidays and the directors departed to the grouse moors.

Employees can now spread their holidays better but it has still been traditional for companies with monthly board meetings to leave August free.

But while previously, only the internal auditors had to slog through the summer to have the figures ready for the directors in September, now the board has to return home from holidays prematurely to approve the results and respond to media and investor inquiries.

Yet the days before a bank holiday are still quiet times for the rest of the market. The results may appear sooner, but investors are still on holiday, newspapers are thin and City analysts are not at their desks.

Press coverage of results is limited because so many are competing for space and writers’ time. And because stockmarket trading is thin during these dog days of summer, a results announcement can produce volatile price movements.

It is a noble objective that news is announced to the market as soon as possible, but making those announcements in a holiday period is not ideal.

Most companies still have December year-ends and thus present interim figures in August, just as the June year-end companies are revealing preliminary results too. Maybe they should follow the retailers and change their year-end to January to avoid ruining their summers.

As the UK company was buying something bigger than its existing business – a reverse takeover – the UK Listings Authority demanded it make a statement to the market, giving shareholders the full financial details of the assets being acquired.

But International Power did not have such information – and GDF uses different accounting standards – so UKLA demanded a dealing suspension until the information was available.

The FTSE 100 company had no wish to suspend trading. Nevermind that halting dealing is associated with companies about to make a dire profits warning or call in administrators, it would have left shareholders unable to buy or sell, possibly for months while the information was pulled together.

So the directors made the immediate statement that UKLA demanded – but announced that the takeover talks were off.

They preferred to abandon the bid rather than face a freeze on dealings – even though that deprived its investors of the benefit. But having said the talks were off, the company was not allowed to resume them for several months – and that meant it could not ask GDF for the information it needed for announcing they had restarted.

UKLA has conceded the catch-22 it had created for companies and has applied some of the common sense more common at the flexibly pragmatic Takeover Panel than at its own strict parent, the Financial Services Authority.

The listing authority has quietly changed its rules so that from now on a bidder can avoid suspension on a reverse takeover so long as it can provide basic data on the target’s profits, net assets and liabilities and cashflow.

So long as there are comfort letters from advisers and a trading update, such figures can be unaudited, in incompatible accounting formats, and can be changed later.

Bids by cash shells are still subject to the old tough rules and the loophole of creating new topco to buy both the listed company and its target has been closed, but avoiding suspensions can only help shareholders.

The UKLA says halting dealings can ensure smooth operation of the market and protect investors, but what is the point of protecting investors if they cannot sell?

Both appointments were greeted with criticism and scrutiny of their personal and business affairs. They accepted the roles because of public duty but they have ended up subject to public examination.

Businessmen have many skills that they can share with the public sector. Green is a notorious squeezer of costs to improve margins, not scared to tell suppliers to reprice their orders to ensure they are considered for future business.

Nevermind whether he can teach government departments about employment practices or other matters, he can teach how to make real savings on procurement.

Yet his own background and reputation as a rough diamond irritates many members from the Liberal democrat side of the coalition.

Green’s retail businesses are owned by his wife who is based offshore and thus pays no tax on the substantial dividends that the successful private company pays.

For a government that is trying to maximise its tax revenue as well as seeking to reduce spending, such a corporate structure rankles.

Rowlands has been criticised for his own past tax avoidance. Maybe both businessmen have thick skins but if they didn’t realise before accepting their posts that the appointments would attract adverse publicity, they were naive.

And any other businessmen inclined to accept the invitation to work for government or party will have watched what happened to them and wonder whether it is worth bothering.

The last Labour government relied heavily on business people – Lords Browne, Myners, Davies, Sugar, et al. In some cases it looked like the politicians merely wished to surround themselves with corporate celebrities to show they were business friendly.

Lord Digby Jones found the bureaucracy too frustrating to continue: others will find they have written reports that are never implemented.

Green is not being made a minister, but some businessmen, may decide the reward is not worth the effort.

No one would suggest that because not every applicant to Oxbridge can be accepted on courses, more colleges should be built there; so why suggest that extra spaces are created at other universities to accommodate all who want to attend? A university place has to be earned, not demanded.

It was well-meant folly to suggest that 50 per cent of school-leavers should progress to university. It not only meant lowering entry standards to ensure enough people pass the threshold, it falsely assumed that so many people will benefit from a university education – an intellectual arrogance and ignorance perpetrated by those who have degrees and think everyone else should have them too.

But if the academics need re-educating in the value of taking a degree, so do employers, students, parents, schoolteachers and others who offer advice. We must stop using a degree as proxy for career success.

Students should consider whether missing out of three years’ further education is a three-year delay in their career, three years’ less earnings, a large student loan and possible lifetime graduate tax – and, for many, an intellectual strain.

This is not an excuse or an argument for not trying to succeed at school, but while for many the benefits of a degree will offset the input, for many more it does not – not least because bad degrees in easy subjects impress few employers, leaving the graduates more jobless than if they had sought employment straight from school.

Employers rightly look beyond the degree certificate to chose the best graduates but they should also consider whether offering their own relevant training to people who shun – or are shunned – by universities could give them a better employee and give the employee a better future.

The banks are probably the only ones who can compete on losses but they are far too wise (or lazy) to report quarterly. Producing four sets of figures a year is an American affectation, subscribed to by some UK companies seeking a market for their shares in the US, but it is a trick not worth the effect - and Unilever’s boss has had the courage to say so.

The Anglo-Dutch food and household goods group is one of that handful of European companies to report quarterly and probably does so only because its arch-rival in the US, Proctor & Gamble, has to do so - just as BP is trying to keep up with its American competitors. But Unilever chief executive Paul Polman thinks such frequent reporting only encourages short-termism by investors, making them concentrate on immediate trading rather than looking at the future or the long-term trend.

“A lot of problems the world has found itself in are because people were chasing quarterly results,” he pronounced after, oddly enough, announcing results that the City analysts considered disappointing.

Polman has previously said customers are more important than shareholders - a fair point if you accept that without a top line there can be no bottom line. He has abolished forecasts too, leaving those to the analysts to get wrong.

For the few firms that do produce quarterly results, the annual circus of announcements seems to be a never-ending conveyor belt. As well as the four results statements there are pre-announcement trading updates, an annual report and an annual shareholders’ meeting - plus any additional disclosures to accompany takeovers or other deals. And there is also pressure to produce interim balance sheets as well as profit and loss accounts too. Accounts departments work overtime and companies seem to be perpetually in close periods, always too close to an announcement to be able to say anything of interest - or allow directors to deal in the shares.

If BP does not want to report another record quarterly loss, the easiest way to avoid it is to cut out quarterly reporting. Then it can go into competition with the UK banks and aim for the biggest half-yearly loss instead.

And in practical terms it is a bad tax. The temptation to go abroad rather than pay the lifetime levy will be great. Even if the tax is refined to exclude those who took degrees abroad but live in Britain, or those foreigners who pay at source for their UK degrees – and exempts low-earners but also lets off people who chose, say, to bring up families, rather than work – it will be as bureaucratic to collect as it is a burden to pay.

Ministers argue that graduates can afford to pay because over their life they will earn £100,000 more than the average person. Well, the past generation of graduates could: now that the average teenager goes to uni, not everyone can be earning more than the average. And while they may earn more because they are more intelligent, they aren’t brighter because they went to university - they went there because they are bright.

But there already is a good tax mechanism for recovering the cost of higher education. It is the progressive income tax system. People earning £100,000 extra will, at minimum, pay basic rate tax on that – currently giving the government £20,000. If they move into the 40 per cent rate, or even the 50 per cent bracket, the state recovers yet more.

And we have a student-loans scheme that recovers part of the cost of education as a 9 per cent levy on graduates earning above £15,000 a year. But once the loan is repaid, that’s it – the slate is clean. A graduate tax would mean those with successful careers quickly repay the cost of their own education but must then start paying for the less successful.

Lord Browne will report in the autumn of 2010 on how higher education should be funded. It is right graduates pay for their privilege with no cross-subsidy from those who shun college. And it is fair that some universities or come courses charge more than others: if students are paying they will demand value. But a tax that effectively gives the state an equity stake in graduates rather than providing a loan is fundamentally bad, and the BP boss should say so.

If it surprises you that a French company is giving up control of such capacity read on: GDF is injecting these assets in return for a 70 per cent stake in International Power. So while the UK company remains a quoted company listed on the London Stock Exchange, it will be a subsidiary of the very-French GDF.

Yet GDF is not the top of the pyramid. The French government owns over 35 per cent of its shares – indeed, by law the state has to own at least a third of the equity. That’s not control you may say, but the French government also has a “golden share”, six directors on GDF’s board (mainly civil servants and heads of other nationalised industries) and the finance minister has to give approval for any strategic disposals.

Nor will International Power be the bottom of this pyramid because the deal will mean it is the majority holder of quoted subsidiaries in Pakistan, Thailand, Chile and Peru.

So those quoted companies across Asia and Latin America are controlled by the UK FTSE company, which will be controlled by a company listed in Paris that is a puppet of the French government.

It was through such pyramids of listed vehicles that entrepreneurs such as Robert Maxwell, Jimmy Goldsmith and Conrad Black ran their empires. They are a way to control vast empires from a small base. By owning 51 per cent of a firm that holds 51 per cent of another that owns 51 per cent of a third, the person at the top of the pyramid can hold command over the whole base at minimal cost.

GDF will be able to consolidate the whole of International Power into its group accounts, even though it owns only 70 per cent (with a standstill agreement to stop its stake being diluted). Debt and cashflow are likely to become intermingled, even though the UK company has £5bn of minority shareholders.

The law may allow this multi-tier corporate structure, but stockmarket have their way of punishing any fear that they will work against minority investors’ interests. Yet if the stock of International Power languishes because of the dominant shareholder, that merely makes it cheaper for the majority holder to mop up the remaining shares.