Pembroke: No job for the boys

UNDER-PERFORMING companies with lacklustre boards should feel nervous if they see the name of Gartmore, the pension management group, appear on their share registers.

In an interview in Governance, a monthly newsletter dedicated to the worthy but dull subject of corporate governance, Gartmore's investment director, Michael Bishop, comes across as a kind of corporate hit man, ready to 'take out' weak management at every opportunity.

His tactics are worthy of note. Stealth and the support of the largest institutional directors are his style. 'There's no point going in with eight or nine smaller investors: you can't send in lads,' he says. His route is through the non- executive directors, which avoids alerting the banks and the press to a company's problems. You have been warned.

A MANCHESTER franchise company thinks that what this country needs is another American-style fast food outlet.

Riverside International, which also runs a franchise selling home-delivered pet food, is launching Custers on an unsuspecting public. Custers specialises in American delicacies such as the corn dog, a chicken-based sausage coated in batter that is allegedly popular with children.

Who will eat it? 'We've done a lot of research on this,' says David Mooney, Riverside's managing director, summoning up some strangely herbivorous imagery. 'It's aimed at the grazing market. People will eat it on the hoof.'

STRESSED out at work? Passed over for promotion? Bored witless by doing the same repetitive tasks all day? Sue your employer for 'cumulative trauma'. This, at least, is how the lawyers Davies Arnold Cooper see the future if UK companies do not try to limit the damage.

According to a new report by the firm's Nicholas Rochez and Mark Scoggins, stress could be the modern business equivalent of asbestosis or coal miner's lung.

Which jobs carry the greatest risk? De-skilled jobs in manufacturing and jobs where people are in charge but not in control, says Mr Scoggins, citing airline pilots as an example.

All this is not pie in the sky. It is believed that two senior managers in professional practices in the UK have already settled for large sums when, after working like Trojans in the belief promotion to partner was near, they found that the goalposts had been moved. Both threatened litigation for the stress caused by the shock. 'This whole issue could go much further much more quickly than the passive smoking case,' warns Mr Scoggins.