Jeremy Warner's Outlook: Look who's shouting now as BPB's shy Mr Cousins demands more from the French

Turner keeps us guessing on pensions; Gardner's question time at Centrica

Mr Cousins has already announced a £350m return of capital and a big rise in the dividend in an attempt to see off his assailant. Yesterday he further bolstered the defences by forecasting a 24 per cent rise in underlying pre-tax profits to not less than £350m. If BPB were valued on the same 14.3 earnings multiple as its peer group, Mr Cousins insists, the shares would have an implied value of 715p. Ergo, Saint-Gobain's 720p a share represents almost no premium for control whatsoever.

There are two flaws in this analysis, the first more easily answered than the second. Number one is that BPB shares were trading at a 41 per cent discount to the Saint-Gobain offer prior to news of its approach. In Mr Cousins' view, this was because the stock market had simply failed to keep pace with the improvement in BPB's prospects. He hadn't been shouting loud enough. In his opinion, the shares would have enjoyed a substantial re-rating anyway once news of the profits surge had been announced to the stock market. Well, possibly, but by 40 per cent? This is rather harder to believe.

But the bigger fly in the ointment lies in the constitution of the peer group, which contains a number of highly rated US aggregates companies. Aggregates are thought of as a scarce resource in the US and therefore command a premium. Strip these companies out and the peer group multiple is a good deal lower.

Mr Cousins makes a better point on the dividend, which even at Saint-Gobain's 720p a share would give rise to a FTSE 100 average yield of 3.2 per cent. What's more, unlike the rest of the building materials sector, which tends to grow only in line with the economy, plasterboard is a strongly growing commodity, particularly in emerging markets where BPB has focused the bulk of its investment in recent years. That in itself should command a premium, Mr Cousins believes.

He talks a good game, and with the shares trading at 736.5p in the stock market - quite a bit above the value of Saint-Gobain's bid - he must begin to believe he's in with a chance. Sadly, the price is only as high as it is because of the expectation that Saint-Gobain will eventually raise its bid to be sure of success. Where the price would settle if Saint-Gobain were to declare its present offer final is anyone's guess, but I suspect it would significantly lower than 715p a share.

In his five years as chief executive, Mr Cousins has barely put a foot wrong, unless as he says it is in being too shy about his triumphs. His biggest contribution was to eschew the diversification pursued by others so as to concentrate entirely on fast-growing plasterboard markets. Ironically, this makes him a target for the empire-building diversifiers.

In mulling his final strategy, Saint-Gobain's chairman, Jean-Louis Beffa, will be mindful of what happened to the other big French construction materials group, Lafarge, when it bid for Blue Circle. Shareholders called Lafarge's bluff when it refused to raise its offer beyond a certain level, forcing Lafarge to wait a further year before returning with a higher bid acceptable to the board.

Mr Cousins won't agree anything with less than an eight before it. The hedge funds would deliver the company for less. Quite how much less is for Saint-Gobain to take its chances on. Too little and it will fail. The game has a way to go yet.

Turner keeps us guessing on pensions

Tricky stuff, pensions policy, as Adair Turner, the chairman of the Pensions Commission, made plain again yesterday when speaking to the Trade Union Congress. This was one of those roundabout speeches that posed more questions than it answered, perhaps deliberately so because Mr Turner doesn't want to give anything away about what reforms the Pensions Commission will recommend when it reports on 30 November.

Raise the basic state pension to a living wage? Too expensive, implied Mr Turner, who pointed out that by 2050 there will be twice as many pensioners per working head of population than there are now.

Rely on means testing to bridge the gap between the pensioner haves and have-nots, which is essentially the Government's present policy? That only undermines the voluntary system and would also make compulsory saving unacceptable if people saw some of the benefit of their saving disappearing as a result of the means testing.

Try to get more people to save into funded pensions? Despite the range of incentives already available, private pension saving is still shrinking. Many employers do not see it as their role to provide pensions simply for reasons of social responsibility, with cash wages seen as more attractive to most employees than the deferred pay of any pension promise.

So what about compulsion, seen by the TUC and others as the way forward provided employee contributions are matched by employers. On this too, Mr Turner was giving little away. What he did say was that if you compel employers to contribute to pensions it would only be at the expense of cash wages. This is what happened in Australia when compulsion was introduced.

As for compelling employees to save, the problem here is that it is difficult for the financial services industry to sell pensions to people on average earnings and below at annual management charges sufficiently high to make a profit and sufficiently low to prevent the saving being substantially gobbled up by the charge.

No easy choices, then. Yet Mr Turner has to recommend something. Government willing, I suspect he'll eventually opt for some version of the auto-enrolment system which is being adopted in New Zealand. Here the idea is that employees will automatically have 5 per cent of their earnings deducted and saved via a state-administered but privately invested scheme unless they deliberately opt out.

This neatly gets round the charge of compulsion as well as allowing employees the flexibility to save when they can. Because the scheme would be nationally administered, say through the PAYE system, charges could also be kept to a bare minimum. But would the Government back such a bold approach? Answers, Mr Blunkett, please.

Gardner's question time at Centrica

Any hope that Mark Clare, the deputy chief executive of Centrica, might have had of stepping into Sir Roy Gardner's shoes when he retires as chief executive next year is likely to be dashed today when the company announces it will be looking outside for a successor.

This is unfair on Mr Clare, who is the operations man at Centrica and has been a loyal deputy to Sir Roy through thick and thin, but it's the way of the world and he shouldn't be too downhearted.

If stock market speculation is to be believed, Centrica will soon find itself on the receiving end of a takeover bid. The new chief executive, whoever it might be, may not even get the chance to get his feet under the table.

Sir Roy has done an outstanding job at Centrica since it was demerged from British Gas, complete with the toxic waste of unwanted take or pay North Sea gas contracts. True, the subsequently pursued multi-utility strategy didn't really work. Sir Roy has already sold the AA and Onetel is likely to follow shortly, but both have succeeded in delivering great value to shareholders. Sir Roy will be a hard act to follow.

j.warner@independent.co.uk