Outlook: FitzGerald acts the Dove but his excuses don't quite wash

Unilever is one of those companies which is supposed to be, if not recession proof, then at the very least less prone to the ups and downs of the cycle. People still need to wash and eat however grim the economic news gets. So the failure to hit any of its key financial targets in the first quarter, understandably went down in the City like a Pot Noodle at Gordon Ramsay's.

Niall FitzGerald wheeled out a range of excuses ranging from the late Easter (a favourite these days for companies in any line of business) to the downturn in the number of Americans eating out, but reassured everyone that Unilever would still hit its target of 5-6 per cent sales growth for the year

The market was not persuaded. It gave the shares the Slim-Fast treatment, shaving £1.4bn off Unilever's market value, and it is easy to see why. Sales of Unilever's 400 leading brands were up by only 3 per cent while the performance of the group overall was an even more pedestrian 2 per cent rise in underlying sales. Translated into a year's figures, that would lop around £1bn from sales, which is enough to buy an awful lot of Aloe Vera.

The worst affected markets were Europe and America, which account for two-thirds of sales and which actually fell by 1 per cent and 2 per cent respectively. Even though Asia-Pacific grew strongly (before the Sars virus began to send shivers through the region) and Latin America and the Middle East did well, Unilever needs its two big growth engines to start firing on all cylinders if it is to avoid disappointing everyone.

If the first quarter setback is down to Unilever-specific problems and keener competition from the likes of Proctor & Gamble and Kraft then the markets will be unforgiving. If they are reflective of a wider malaise then it spells trouble all round. The US economy remains sluggish, as yesterday's jobs figures demonstrate, and if the Baghdad bounce is working here then it is certainly yet to do likewise on the other side of the Atlantic.

Safeway shuffle

Is that a shuffling of the deckchairs we see at bid target Safeway? Yesterday's three-sentence announcement that supply director Lawrence Christensen will now also assume responsibility for the group's retail operations, reporting to Carlo Criado-Perez, the chief executive, did not explain the rationale for his promotion but it looks fairly obvious. In short, Safeway is doing everything it can to ensure that trading does not collapse during a bid battle which looks like being far more protracted than first thought. With William Morrison's bid now with the Competition Commission as well as those from Tesco, J Sainsbury and Wal-Mart/ Asda it looks more and more like a summer war of attrition.

The danger for Safeway is that its days of independence will drag on until the end of the year at least. Indeed it could be much worse than that. The nightmare scenario for David Webster, Safeway's chairman, is one in which Philip Green decides he doesn't fancy bidding after all and the trade bidders are all blocked, leaving Safeway on the shelf like the last limp chicken breast on a bank holiday weekend.

So far, Safeway's sales have held up reasonably well as last month's trading update showed, even though this has been at the expense of margin. However, market share has still been falling and it is hard to believe that next month's full year figures won't show some of the scars of the extended contest. Mr Christensen's promotion is an insurance policy – and like all insurance policies Safeway must be praying it doesn't end up claiming on it.

Maxwell's legacy

It is now almost 12 years since Robert Maxwell plundered £400m from his company pension funds and then went overboard. Yet despite the plethora of inquiries, pension reviews and new pension rules, it is far from clear whether another Maxwell scandal could be detected and stopped in its tracks. The watchdog set up in Maxwell's wake, the Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority, has turned into a toothless mutt as yesterday's report from the Public Accounts Committee amply demonstrates.

Opra has proved to be a box-ticking body so mired in the trivia of pensions regulation that it would be a doddle for a determined and nimble fraudster to side-step its reach. Of the 56,000 or so cases investigated by Opra since its creation in 1995, more than 60 per cent have concerned procedural breaches such as late payment of pension contributions and in a half of these cases, the length of delay is just 10 days.

Part of the problem is the legislation itself, since the Pensions Act 1995 fails to give Opra any objectives, much less define its functions, unlike, for instance the raft of utility regulators created over the years.

What, as the MPs say, is needed, is a proactive body with the power to investigate whether trustees are fit and proper and to revoke their -appointment if not and review a pension scheme's investments to ensure, for instance, that its funds are not being invested in the company its members work for.

It would require new legislation and a new regulator with a considerably enhanced budget which would be an anathema to some. The Government's pensions green paper talked in general terms about introducing the necessary changes sometime next year. It needs to deliver.

The closure of final salary schemes and the rapidly dwindling value of defined contribution schemes have made pensions a touchstone issue for politicians. Another grand theft of a pension fund would mean a whole heap of trouble for those charged with preventing such things.

Scotland forever

Corporate history is littered with the bodies of companies that decided to change their names and then wished they hadn't, Consignia and Corus being but the latest examples. Now Royal Bank of Scotland has begun to airbrush the S-word from its public image because, in the words of chief executive Fred Goodwin, "people associate Scotland with whisky, tartan, bagpipes and golf". They also associate Scotland and Scottishness with prudence and inventiveness and resourcefulness, which are all useful attributes to have if you are a bank, but we can let that pass.

The point is that Scotland is part of the strength of the Royal Bank of Scotland's brand, not, as Mr Goodwin implies, an excuse to pigeonhole it in and deny the bank's world-wide presence. He seems particular keen to minimise the bank's Scottishness in America, where it is now the owner of the Citizens Financial Group. Why? It is a bit like American Express preferring to be known by its initials in Edinburgh.

It may be convenient journalistic shorthand to refer to RBS but for the banking public, at home and in some respects more so abroad, the words Royal and Scotland have resonance. Not very reassuringly, a spokeswoman trills: "We have no intention of dropping the Scotland name completely."

As for the nation's football team, now that would be another matter altogether....

m.harrison@independent.co.uk