Men and power...
HE WOULD not find it difficult to find something more businesslike than the cum- brous council, 28 strong — it must remind him of old-style bank boards, which needed microphones to help the deafer directors hear what was happening at the other end. The council is written into the Act, but its size is not. It has room to slim. Nor does the Act, as I understand it, say that the council must do everything itself. It has to legislate for Lloyd's, making and unmaking its by-laws, but it does not have to choose the doorman or polish his black hat. It can delegate. It could, if it chose, delegate the running of the markets to one board, with the market professionals in the lead, and its regulation to another, mostly non-excutive, much as Mr Rowland intended. It could then start to think about the roles of Lloyd's two most important people: the chairman, and the chief executive. There will be vacancies. Alan Lord, Lloyd's chief executive since 1986, retires at the end of this week. No successor has been chosen —
nor can be, evidently, until the job is defined. If Mr Rowland's idea is carried through (Mr Lord did not care for it) the right place for the new chief executive would be at the sharp end, running the business. This is not a job for a retired major-general. David Coleridge, Lloyd's chairman, was drafted in, 18 months ago, on the principle of: cometh the hour, cometh the man. His first action was to commission the Rowland inquiry. In no sense did he need the chairman's job, and he can be excused for thinking that it has brought him more kicks than ha'pence, for it is unpaid. That is how Lloyd's does things. A chairman is lent by his firm, to serve for a few years, until the next man's turn — rather like being chairman of a club. The Bank of England used to be gov- erned like that, but gave it up in 1914. The Stock Exchange has decided that its chair- man needs to be full-time, and pays him accordingly. Lloyd's needs to start thinking about its tradition. I am sure that the cere- bral Sir Jeremy has started already.
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