In the boardroom

ITV shareholders did not wait for Sir Crispin Davis to be appointed chairman before saying publicly they didn’t like him. No wonder people are thinking twice before putting themselves forward to head our major companies. Even salaries of £500,000 plus share options have left supply well short of demand in the ‘C-suite’. A large number of companies have been searching for a chairman this summer but the pool of candidates seems noticeably small: the same names are touted for each job and the rejects join the next shortlist as soon as one vacancy is filled.

Davis, former chief executive of publishers Reed Elsevier, was mooted as chairman of J Sainsbury before the headhunters called him about ITV. The Sainsbury chair (won by Logica’s David Tyler) was available because Sir Philip Hampton became chairman of UKFI, the agency that holds taxpayers’ shareholdings in troubled banks — but such is the shortage of acceptable people that Hampton was almost immediately made chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland instead, forcing UKFI to search again.