CITY AND SUBURBAN
Saturday keeps catching up with the board of the National Westminster Bank
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Taking time off from his latest Savoy opera, Gilbert wrote a letter of complaint to the directors of the Metropolitan Rail- way: 'Saturday mornings, though occurring at frequent and well-regulated intervals, always seem to take this railway by sur- prise.' The directors of the National West- minster Bank have the same trouble. Every time they have to choose themselves a new chairman it seems to come as a terrible shock to them. Saturday has come round once again. It came round 15 years ago when the chairman, Robin Leigh-Pember- ton, was spirited away to be Governor of the Bank of England. The directors stared at each other and finally voted to let him be succeeded by an older man. This was Lord Boardman, and when his seventieth birth- day came in sight, the directors were pre- pared, or thought they were. They had the chairman of British Petroleum, Sir Peter Walters, all lined up. Unfortunately one of them then asked him what he would do first. Cut the board in half, he said. The directors dug in to defend their fees and lunches and Sir Peter went off to become chairman of the Midland. By now they were caught up in the Blue Arrow affair, the Department of Trade had its inspectors in, a new chairman was needed in a hurry, and the cupboard was bare. It took a push from the previous chairman, in his new post as Governor, to bring in Lord Alexander of Weedon QC. 'Robin likes a barrister, because he was one', so a friend in the Bank told me, 'and he likes a grandee, because he is one'. That was almost ten years ago, NatWest's troubles or some of them have come back to haunt it, Lord Alexander can- not have relished this last year and the City expects that he will retire in the spring.
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