CITY AND SUBURBAN
No more pocket boroughs at Lloyd's of London, so throw the rascals out
CHRISTOPHER I- ILDES
Polling day looms at Lloyd's of Lon- don. Members must vote for two candi- dates to represent them on the ruling Council, and can choose from ten. These elections are needle matches. Gone are the days when Lloyd's members, like tame electors in pocket boroughs, waited to be told which way their agents wanted them to vote. Nowadays the agents are mailing fewer cheques and more calls for money, the voters have emerged from their pocket, and candidates come forward with the ancient cry of 'Throw the rascals out!' Peter Nutting, on behalf of the hard- pressed members on the Outhwaite syndi- cate, has been treading on toes all over Lloyd's. Now he assures the electors: `I am unlikely to become an insider in a cosy club.' Last year's runner-up, Rona, Lady Delves Broughton, is standing again, on a programme of reform. She wants a way out of the Lloyd's three-year accounting periods and personal unlimited liability for members — which nowadays have little on their side but the antiquity of tradition. She is canvassing the American members and undertaking to speak up for them. Lloyd's gets more than half its business from the United States and has 12 per cent of its members there, but they have no consti- tuency and there has never been an Amer- ican on the Council. `Members are custom- ers of agents', says Edmund Lester. `Satis- fied customers do not complain or leave.' I find the reformers more impressive than such old-style candidates as Andrew Rip- ley, who publishes a picture of himself in a rugby football shirt to remind the voters that he used to play for England, but has no more to say than that Lloyd's is chang- ing and that he wants to help make the change productive. Gosh, what a novel notion. Next year Lloyd's will have a powerful new chairman in David Cole- ridge, set to make Lloyd's less clubbish and more businesslike — and not a moment too soon. If that is what his members, who are in effect the shareholders, want, they had better vote and say so. They should have learned by now that if they will not stand up for themselves, no one else will do it for them.
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