THE Standard Life annual meeting is on April 26, less than a month away, and there are three rebels standing for the board, against the six candidates favoured by the insurer.

There was a dispute earlier this year after suggestions that, if any members only chose to vote for the three rebels, Sir Brian Stewart, the chairman, would cancel these out with their other three votes. “Simply untrue,” he blasted.

Well, up to a point. Members are now receiving the proxy forms, and they are told that if they vote for fewer than six candidates, they have to tick a box to ensure their other votes are not used. “If you do not mark this box, your proxy (the company) may cast any unused votes on your behalf as he or she thinks fit.”

Inertia voting, then? Standard Life insists the form is “clear, fair and in accordance with best practice” and that the Electoral Reform Services is happy with it. The critics, unsurprisingly, are unhappy. How much easier it will be next year, when the insurer becomes a quoted company.

SIR DIGBY JONES, the CBI Director-General, has attacked soaps such as Coronation Street and The Archers before for negative portrayals of businessmen. But he has a new target: Sir Alan Sugar’s The Apprentice. “It is so negative.” Digby, it’s reality TV, not a soap. If it was positive, they wouldn’t have screened it.

The ads of March

PATRICK EVERSHED, the veteran fund manager at New Star Asset Management, has laid out another £14,000 of his own money for a front-page advert in The Daily Telegraph in support of the Conservatives. The president of the Cities of London and Westminster Conservative Association, a regular advertiser, says: “It is time to unite behind Michael Howard and The Conservative Party.”

Not brilliant timing from a City man, just after Howard sacks the party’s City spokesman, I suggest? “It took four weeks to get in,” says Evershed. “Things happen. As a result of what’s happened, it’s even more important everyone does rally around Michael Howard.”

At the time he booked the ad, he was concerned about the eurosceptic vote drifting off to the UKIP and so letting in Labour. On Flight’s sacking, Evershed is diplomatic.

“You certainly won’t find me criticising Howard Flight,” he says. “But all of us in the Conservative Party have got to be extremely careful we don’t say something that would allow the Labour Party to say we’re cutting services.”

YOU do wonder what sort of half-wits write those Nigerian scam letters. Their grasp of English is never brilliant, but the latest I have seen, claiming to be “From Auditor, Bank of Scotland” begins with the arresting introduction “Hello My Dear . . .”

Business futures

AN ENTERPRISING gypsy tarot reader whose caravan resides on the remaining pier in Brighton is claiming an impressive list of corporate clients, a colleague noticed over the Bank Holiday.

“Ivor Tarot Consultant”, whose advice spans “career, love, happiness, luck”, claims to act for Cable & Wireless and GlaxoSmithKline, both of which could have done with his advice in the past, I suppose, Deutsche Bank, Cornhill Insurance . . . even a couple of the dear departed, Enterprise Oil and Guinness.

city.diary@thetimes.co.uk

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