CALL them vultures or value investors, but the funds that have built up chunky stakes in Tomkins are certainly getting restive. Despite the sale of Ranks Hovis McDougal and share buybacks, the stock price remains sickly, stuck well below half the level of March 1998. Efforts to beef up the board and launch a charm offensive on the City have proved ineffectual. So now the campaign for change is turning nasty. Convinced that Greg Hutchings, the man who built up Tomkins, is now dragging it down, his opponents are trying to have him ousted from the company.

Superficially, at least, they do appear to have assembled some embarrassing ammunition. Even if Arthur Andersen does manage to find convincing evidence of why his wife and housekeeper should have been on the Tomkins payroll, the episode is likely to leave a nasty taste. And shareholders may be concerned that the company had not put them entirely in the picture regarding its fleet of private jets. Some who had attended the annual meeting, and listened to questioning on the subject, somehow left with the impression that Tomkins had sold the planes. Now it transpires this was not the case. Private jets have been the downfall of many an executive.

Hutchings has long complained about the treatment meted out to him by the stock market, moaning that his shares were undervalued and protesting bitterly when his profit-making business was booted out of the FTSE 100 to make way for a loss making media company.

But what many in the City were uncomfortable with was the feeling that he ran the company as an old-style proprietor, acting as if he owned the business rather than only a tiny fraction of it. This is a familiar scenario. His old bosses at Hanson Trust found it difficult to accept entirelythe idea that they did not own the show. When a business has been built up by individuals they feel a sense of ownership and even want to pass on the reins to their offspring, no matter that their shareholding has been watered right down.

The idea of a board of directors is to try and curb that tendency to run a public company as if it was still private. Now it seems that the system may not have been working as it should at Tomkins. Bringing in a new chairman in the shape of David Newlands, and Sir Brian Pitman as a non-executive director was bound to lead to change. That change now looks potentially more drastic than had been anticipated.

Even if the currrent inquiry exonerates Hutchings, he is unlikely to want to linger long at the company.

His management style belongs to a previous era, as does the philosophy behind Tomkins. The woman who once boasted in a TV advert: 'I want to be in conglomerates is now history.

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