At which point, will Sir George demand Mr Botin's resignation, as Sir Christopher Hogg did at Glaxo-SmithKline when non-executive Paul Allaire settled fraud charges to do with his stewardship of Xerox?This case is more complicated. Banco Santander Central Hispano is not only the largest shareholder in Royal Bank, and a long-term investor that has backed it for more than a decade, it is also the creation of Mr Botin himself, who turned it from a small regional bank into Spain's financial powerhouse. A criminal trial, relating to a tax avoidance scheme run for wealthy investors in the 1980s, would no doubt force the 67-year-old banker into retirement.The succession issue is complicated at BCH and will bring renewed speculation about the nature of its relationship with the Royal Bank. Before Royal Bank bought NatWest, there was talk that the two banks could merge, but Royal Bank is now by far the senior partner.Perhaps Mr Botin's troubles could create an opportunity for Sir George and his aggressive prot? Fred Goodwin. Spain is an attractive market, as anyone at Barclays will tell you. It would be a feather in Royal Bank's cap to be the first UK bank to secure a meaningful deal in Europe.j.nisse independent.co.uk. The most ironic time for a reporter's tape recorder to break down must be in the middle of an interview with John Clare, chief executive of Dixons Group, which includes Currys, PC World and mobile phone retailer The Link.
Between them, these companies sell almost anything that requires an electrical current. An aide provided first some batteries and then a replacement machine. "It would be embarrassing if Dixons couldn't find any batteries," she noted.The tall and commanding Clare was fresh from reporting the company's full-year results, after a "difficult" period. In his straightforward manner, Clare says that the 1 per cent increase in the group's like-for-like sales and the £4m fall in profits to £279m was not good enough "We had a difficult and disappointing year," he admits. "We are in a better shape to face the future than we were in January, and possibly this time last year. But we are still not delivering, and that is the challenge for the year ahead."The seller of fridges, cameras and computers has recently had to spend less time on fancy new products and more time dealing with regulatory investigations and directives from Brussels.
Dixons is currently embroiled in a Competition Commission investigation into the profitable extended warranties it sells, and was earlier affected by a European directive on recycling that led to large "fridge mountains" springing up around the country. Soon there could be new mountains of microwaves, CD players and computers as Brussels debates protecting the environment from other worn-out electrical goods.The anti-regulation drum used to be beaten by Sir Stanley Kalms, who grew the £2.5bn Dixons from a humble photographic studio in 1948. After his retirement as chairman in September, the drum has been passed on to the 52-year old Clare, chief executive since 1994.He is not afraid to bang it loudly, and recently railed against a "pervasive culture of intervention and regulation," at a Confederation of British Industry summit. "It's part of business life these days that these sort of regulators or regulations or bureaucrats or whatever are involved somehow in the way you do business," sighs Clare.
"It would be pointless complaining about that - it's the way of life."Untangling red tape has taken up a lot of his time over the past year. Whether there's a connection or not, the business has suffered. A gloomy profits warning in January knocked its share price from 146p to a low of 79p in March, and Clare stated that consumer confidence was "cracking". Last week's results were not as bad as feared, and the shares bounced back up to finish at 131p.
