Nothing wrong with boring when you chair an annual meeting

IT TAKES a great deal of skill to chair an AGM and a key measure of success is how boring you can make it.

So, on that measure, when it comes to successful AGMs, Sir Adrian Montague, chairman of British Energy, is a wizard.

We are, after all, talking nukes here. But no sign of CND or even some mildly disparaging shareholders at the AGM at Murrayfield earlier this week . The most controversial moment was when a shareholder pointed out to the board that they were all white, male and "beyond mature".

Although the person in charge of British Energy is Bill Coley, Montague is the government's man.

A long-time fixer for the Treasury, he is credited with being the architect of the private finance initiative. The knighthood was for "services to PFI".

An exciting AGM? Not what the man behind one of New Labour's most controversial programme wanted. And not what he got.