In most privately owned companies this would not seem unreasonable The boss is the boss because he owns the company

In most privately owned companies, this would not seem unreasonable The boss is the boss because he owns the company. But in the people-based businesses that populate the City, the big-fee earners are no longer satisfied with a cut of the profits. They also want a share of the action.In some respects, it’s amazing Mr Parker has been able to hold out as long as he has. Over the years, some of his most talented practitioners have quit in frustration, knowing that if ever the company is sold, they would be unable to share in the resulting cash bonanza. Mr Parker denies that the decision to place nearly half the company’s shares into a pool for the benefit of other partners was prompted by the threat of another walkout, or that it is a precursor to a sale or flotation Yet it is hard to see it any other way. The gamble Mr Parker is making is that his holding of shares in Brunswick will be worth more if he gives some of them away than if he keeps them all to himself. Mr Parker missed his chance to sell the company at the top of the last boom.

I doubt he’ll make that mistake again.jeremy.warner independent.co.uk. BAE Systems yesterday pledged instead to concentrate on putting its UK house in order to prevent a repeat of the crippling cost-overruns that have hit military programmes such as Eurofighter and Nimrod. It has not been a priority for myself or my team to do a merger. Absolutely not,” he said.He was speaking as BAE reported a £233m pre-tax profit for 2003 – compared with a loss of £616m the previous year when the company took an £800m write-off on the Nimrod and Astute submarine programmes.BAE’s hopes of forging a transatlantic defence giant had been seriously undermined anyway by the decisions first of General Dynamics and then Boeing to rule out a merger with the UK company. It is also an issue that has riven the BAE board, with Paolo Scaroni, a long-standing opponent of a merger, due to quit as a non-executive director after May’s annual general meeting.The AGM will also see the departure of BAE’s chairman Sir Dick Evans, who has been the biggest advocate of all of a US merger. The front-runner to replace him is Lord Hollick, the chief executive of United Business Media and himself a former BAE board member.The new BAE chairman will inherit a company whose priority will be to “de-risk” its MoD contracts, which account for some 20 per cent of group sales. One of the first signs of this approach is BAE’s refusal to sign a firm contract to build two aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy until the design, capability and cost of the vessels has been settled and BAE and its partner Thales have agreed how the risk of cost overruns and delays will be apportioned between the MoD and the two contractors.This is likely to mean the “main gate” signing of a firm deal being delayed by up to 12 months until spring next year.

Mr Williams is entitled to 100 per cent of the recording profits payable.These would appear to be payable after Mr Williams has taken payments in relation to recording activities which, in the six months reported, amounted to £17.5m, making him one of the world’s highest paid recording artists.Sales relating to recording and broadcast activities for the company were £22.6m. EMI’s B shares entitle it to 71.43 per cent of the non-recording profits and all of the website profits.The company was only trading for six months, however. But no details of the agreement were released at the time.Now, however, the notes to the company’s accounts for the year to March 2003 show that Mr Williams’s control of the company’s A shares entitle him to 28.75 per cent of the non-recording profits, excluding website profits. EMI Group’s joint venture with Robbie Williams, the recording star, generated turnover of £35m in six months, according to Companies House documents, producing a £17.5m pay day for the singer.
Accounts for In Good Company, the name of the joint venture, detail, for the first time, the earnings of the star and the commercial agreement between the two sides.When Mr Williams agreed to a six-album deal with EMI in 2002, the recording group took the unusual step of taking a stake in the new company formed to manage the music writing, recording, performing and touring activities of Mr Williams. Profits before interest, tax and write-offs was £285m, helped by a strong performance from the group’s European power stations and steady earnings in Australia.The one blot on the European scene was the UK, where International Power is still loss-making even though it brought the Deeside station out of mothballs in the fourth quarter. The company is still negotiating compensation with administrators of TXU Europe over the ending of a tolling arrangement for power supplies from its Rugeley station.. Although wholesale prices have now stabilised, International Power said it would need an increase of about 40 per cent to make its US operations profitable after interest once again.One of the five plants involved in the asset writedown, the 1,100 megawatt gas-fired Hays station in Texas, has already been mothballed due to uneconomic prices, even though it only opened in 2001.Despite the grim news from the US, investors were reassured that International Power had met its earnings guidance for the year and its shares rose 8 per cent to 140.25p.

“We are looking at all options from walking away, to renegotiating the debt, to changing the ownership structure of our US business,” said Philip Cox, International Power’s chief executive. International Power warned yesterday that it might exit from the American market after heavy write-offs in its US electricity generating business sent the group plunging to a £219m loss. It is now in talks with a consortium of banks owed $900m about whether to pull out altogether.A wide-ranging review of the US business, which is based mainly in Texas and New England, has begun and is due to be completed by August at the latest. The banking consortium, which includes Royal Bank of Scotland, Citigroup, ABN Amro, Soci? Gen?le, Deutsche Bank and ING has already declared International Power in technical default on the credit agreement.Profits from the US, which accounts for 40 per cent of International Power’s generating capacity, fell from £99m in 2002 to just £2m last year, due to sharply lower prices and an £80m fall in compensation payments from Alstom for poor performance of gas turbines.Wholesale prices in New England plunged 50 per cent last year because of overcapacity caused by generators building far too many new power stations Texas alone has 35 per cent surplus capacity. “We haven’t ruled anything out.”A $20m interest payment on the debt is due in April and although International Power has not yet defaulted on its US loans, Mr Bentley said it could do depending on whether power prices weakened further. But Dignity makes more revenues from deaths because it also runs a pre-arranged funerals plans business, which doubled in size last year.Dignity said its business was “stable”. Since 1950, about 600,000 people have died every year, reflecting the fact that people are living longer, but that the population is also rising.