But all were agreed that legislation would be wrong, he said.. Bell Cablemedia, one of the largest cable television companies in Britain, has appointed Kleinwort Benson as advisers on a flotation on the London Stock Exchange. The CBI said the IoD proposals would be taken into account.Key areas to be examined are share options, bonuses, contract lengths, disclosure, communications and the effectiveness of remuneration committees.Mr Heseltine described any attempt to regulate boardroom salaries as having “disastrous” consequences for firms and added that singling out the privatised utilities, as Labour suggested, would leave them unable to recruit the best staff.”That would be simply to say `We’re going to keep a second-class tier of companies like British Gas, British Telecom and the power companies’.” Mr Heseltine said on BBC Radio 4’s World at One.Gordon Brown, the shadow Chancellor, said: “He [Heseltine] seems to have more sympathy for privatised industry bosses than the unemployed. To refer to people like Cedric Brown as `poor’ may delight highly-paid bosses but will horrify ordinary workers.”Sir Michael Angus, chairman of Whitbread; Sir Denys Henderson, chairman of ICI, and David Simon, group chief executive of BP, are joining Sir Richard’s committee alongside representatives of the Institute of Directors, the National Association of PensionFunds, the Association of British Insurers and the Stock Exchange.Sir Richard said:”We are trying to put together, through the committee, the views of a very large range of people who will hopefully allow us to pick our way through this and come up with proposals and a code of practice that will be acceptable to everybody.”He described boardroom pay as “a political and media hot potato”, but said the number of abuses was very small. Michael Heseltine, President of the Board of Trade, welcomed the committee, chaired by Sir Richard Greenbury, chairman of Marks & Spencer, saying: “It must be for the private sector to produce a workable code of conduct for companies to follow.”
Mr Heseltine ruled out any Government attempt to regulate boardroom salaries in the wake of the row over the 75 per cent increase for Cedric Brown, chairman of British Gas.He said: “If we want the best newspaper editors, the best pop stars, the best football players, it is a pretty dangerous road to go down and say that the moment they actually get into world class pay scales we are going to regulate them.”The committee was set up on the initiative of the CBI, after heavy hints – but apparently no direct request – from the Government, which has been anxious to get the issue off its plate.Within the committee, which has a remit to rebuild public confidence in the way directors’ pay is set, there are already signs of jostling for position The Institute of Directors is due next Tuesday to publish its own proposals, including a call for muchgreater disclosure. The Government yesterday put responsibility for directors pay firmly onto the shoulders of industry and shareholders, after a top level City and industry committee was established to draw up a code of good practice within six months.

That was the effect of similar campaigns mounted against the water and electricity privatisations The loser was the taxpayer; the winner was the City.. Do investors really believe Labour could afford, financially and politically, to renationalise the rail industry? Ifthey do not, then Labour’s scare-mongering might only serve to make the sell-off even more of a bargain. Labour is calculating it only has to heighten the uncertainty and it will notch up another Post Office humiliation. For the City, judging the likely outcome of this power play is essential to any assessment of whether to call Labour’s bluff. Rail privatisation is deeply unpopular: the presentation has been a mess, and the confusion considerable. If the sale of the passenger franchises for thetrain operating companies can be unsettled, even if only in part, then the entire privatisation stategy could be undermined.Unless a substantial number of these passenger franchises are successfully sold, the City will worry about whether it is possible to privatise Railtrack.

And if the privatisation of Railtrack is hindered, then not only will Labour have put the kibosh on the centrepiece of rail privatisation, but it will also have stolen the jackpot that the Conservatives are counting on to finance pre-election tax cuts.Much of Labour’s work has been done for it. But Labour clearly believes its best chances of success lie in starting the rot early. Tomkins is putting a brave face on the bind it finds itself in, but until the shares come back into favour its hands are tied.Privatisation on twisted tracks If adding confusion to an already messy state of affairs can be considered a policy, then Labour has a clear idea of what it wants for the railways. The thrust of the campaign is simple – to put the wind up the City, smothering the Government’s hopes ofa lucrative sell-off in a blanket of investor anxiety. For the Conservatives to complain that Labour is leaving many questions unanswered about its own rail plans is a somewhat ineffective response, given that sowing as much uncertainty as possible is precisely what the anti-privatisers’ campaign is about.The City has barely begun to focus properly on a sell-off that will only get under way in the second half of this year. Those are risky and, because they have to be financed by the issue of more shares, they are dependent on the rating the market is prepared to afford the company.Conglomerates are out of fashion and food-dominated conglomerates even more so. When you get to a certain size, only bigger and bigger acquisitions stand a chance of making any real difference.