Storm in a tiphook
THE AVERAGE shareholders' meeting is about as much fun as Good Friday in Athlone, the dead centre of Ireland, with the pubs shut. Tiphook's meeting promised sport, if only from questions about the ludi- crous sums paid to directors, first to do their work and then to go away. Then the chairman was asked if he knew that the Royal Bank of Scotland had served a peti- tion in bankruptcy on the man sitting beside him? This was Robert Montague, chairman until a few months ago, now roughing it as chief executive on a mere £1,400,000 a year. That would not go far to keep up two large houses, an Aston Martin, an executive jet and a yacht, and Tiphook itself is by no means as flush as it looked. It bears out my warning, in the Bad Invest- ment Guide, that to own shares in leasing companies is too exciting. They can implode, I said. It also teaches a lesson learned the hard way by Ron Gorrard, who gave £56,000 to Roy Wharton of Castlegate Securities and lost it. 'He had a fabulous lifestyle,' Mr Gorrard gasped. 'He looked like he had done really well for himself. There was no reason for us to suspect that anything was wrong.'
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