ON Monday in Brighton, the Pensions Regulator will receive a delegation of worried pension fund members from a business that recently collapsed with the loss of thousands of jobs.

Remember Allders? The company’s headquarters in Croydon has not been besieged by government ministers promising to move heaven, earth and Brussels bureaucrats in order to see the redundant workers well looked after. The Financial Reporting Council has not swept into action to examine the way in which a prime Allders asset was moved into the ownership of its parent company shortly before the administrators arrived.

Even with an election imminent, the erstwhile Member of Parliament cannot be heard loudly demanding that his former constituents deserve better. Since he is Malcolm Wicks, Tony Blair’s pensions minister, he might have been expected to have something to say on behalf of those who are now out of a job and desperately worried about their pension provision.

The way in which the Allders debacle has been largely ignored by politicians is in sharp contrast to the attention lavished on Longbridge.

There are plenty of other victims of corporate collapse who feel that the focus should not be solely on MG Rover.

Two of them have decided to stand against Gordon Brown on May 5, not because they have any wish to get into Parliament but because they are determined to ensure that their predicament, and that of thousands of others, is not obliterated from the public perception by the rescue mission being staged in the West Midlands.

Unlike the MG Rover pension fund, Allders has not yet become a customer of the Pension Protection Fund (PPF). Its pension scheme is for now being kept alive with monthly dollops of cash from the administrator. It is only a matter of time, however, before it joins the queue for the PPF’s very limited largesse.

There are some optimistic members of the fund who hope that, before that happens, the Minerva Two, Sir David Garrard and Andrew Rosenfeld, might be persuaded to hand it some extra cash. Back in Longbridge, the Phoenix Four have been persuaded to put some of the assets from their Phoenix Ventures into a fund for MG Rover workers. Having taken around £40 million cash out of the business and arranged some very generous pensions for themselves, John Towers, the Rover chairman, and his colleagues could afford this gesture of remorse.

The Minerva Two, however, and other shareholders in their property company, have so far resisted suggestions that they might do likewise. Yet the pensioners action group claims that Minerva has done remarkably well from its involvement with Allders. It was 1997 when Minerva first approached Allders about buying its huge Croydon store. The value it put on it then was £50 million but it was so keen to get the site, which was pivotal to a massive Croydon redevelopment it planned, that it also promised to move Allders to a new store while the development was built and then to return it to pride of place in the wonderful new shopping centre.

Eventually Minerva bought 60 per cent of Allders and installed Terry Green to run it with the disastrous results that will be discussed in Brighton on Monday. But before the collapse, Minerva bought the Croydon store for £49 million. That means it can proceed with its development without the costs and delays of providing a new venue for Allders. It can also install a different key tenant, probably John Lewis, in the main department store, with a consequent boost to rental levels. A fairy tale ending for Minerva, if not the Allders staff.

Drawbacks of hedge funds

HAVING to spend as much time making presentations as running the business has become an occupational hazard for chief executives and finance directors of quoted companies. How galling, then, when the company’s broker drags them before hedge fund managers. Like as not, the broker, who nominally works for the company, is just touting for commission business from hedge funds, which collectively now account for half the equity trades in London.

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