The latest short-circuit on the electricity pitch was the other big factor

The latest short-circuit on the electricity pitch was the other big factor.In late trading Ian Lang, Trade and Industry Secretary, produced a Littlechild- style shock when he announced that the pounds 1.95bn offer by PowerGen for Midlands Electricity and National Power's pounds 2.8m shot for Southern Electric would be referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. With most of the selling coming from the US, the cellular radio group's apparent strength probably stemmed from the absence of US activity with New York closed.The New York silence was one of the influences behind a ragged performance which left the FT-SE 100 index down 29.9 points at 3,602.5. But the Stock Exchange, to the company's dismay, decided it should be regarded as a motor trader although much of its income comes from other operations.As Inchcape wilted, Vodafone, Wednesday's casualty, staged a modest recovery, up 6.5p to 222.5p. Apparently the CBI can't get enough of him and the London branch has sold 650 tickets for the party When Paddy Ashdown went he attracted just 220 revellers.. November's survey of industrial trends showed that the expansion had slowed down.

''But there is nothing in the survey to say there is a manufacturing recession,'' she said.The balance of firms expecting output to rise during the next four months over those expecting a decline fell to 9 per cent. There was a negative balance of 9 per cent expecting above-normal orders in the next four months.Export orders were the lowest in any monthly survey since June 1994, although still close to normal. Domestic orders were weaker than export orders.Companies said their stocks of finished goods were more than adequate to meet demand, with the November balance of 18 per cent similar to recent months and significantly higher than earlier in the year Big firms reported the highest stock levels. The slide means the shares will almost certainly be kicked out of the FT-SE 100 index when it is reviewed next month. Inchcape has been hit by the strength of the yen and the slowdown in the Japanese car industry. Its interim profits reversed from pounds 125.5m to pounds 18.6m.Earlier this month Sir Colin Marshall, chairman of British Airways, was appointed chairman, to take over from the retiring Sir David Plastow at the end of the year.Inchcape was long regarded as an international trader in stock market classifications. The shares have fallen 59p this week and from 444.5p a year ago They were 622p in 1993. A series of profit downgradings have unhinged the share price.

On Wednesday NatWest Securities cut its profit forecast by pounds 10m to pounds 140m. With an election looming, it is no wonder that business wants to put corporate governance on the back burner.This is a serious tactical mistake, as Mr Lindey pointed out yesterday. Anything less than total enthusiasm for the present voluntary methods of improving the conduct of boards could provoke legislation and that could bring anything - even two-tier boards.. Business and the City are adamantly opposed to these, believing that they slow decisions and blur accountability between owners and managers.The Labour Party recently came close, with a proposal that remuneration committees should contain a wholly independent director representing shareholders or employees.

Inchcape, the international trading group, suffered another torrid session. The shares crashed 17.5p to 238p (after 226.5p) as worries about the group's trading performance and the possibility of a dividend cut increased. Such reforms are fine for well-run companies of the type in which Sir Ronnie and Sir Adrian Cadbury have spent their lives, and may even produce an improvement in the general performance and accountability of British business.But they are more than likely to break down where they are most needed - at companies under strain, where boards are in disarray and businesses have problems.Even at Cable & Wireless, hardly a corporate basket case, the supposedly influential non-executives do not appear to have grasped the extent of the row on the board until it was too late.Perhaps the underlying reason business does not want to stir the corporate governance pot again is that the logical next step from the Cadbury and Greenbury reports would be to give legal reality to their attempts to create a special type of non-executive director-cum-police officer.That might well lead to the imposition on an unwilling industry of a British version of the Continental two-tier boards. It gives the non-executives a separate status they do not have in law, and is thus an attempt to embrace surreptitiously some of the better characteristics of Continental two- tier boards without admitting they are a good idea.As a fudge, this solution will work as long as nothing dramatic is expected of it. Non-executive directors have exactly the same legal responsibility for stewardship of a company as executives. Yet the thrust of Cadbury and Greenbury has been to turn them into boardroom police, supervising executive directors on behalf of the shareholders.This is where the Greenbury idea of a powerful non-executive remuneration committee, reporting over the heads of the rest of the board directly to shareholders, may run into the buffers. Mr Lindey says shareholders will ask questions, focusing managers' attention on performance in a way impossible before.As this thought sinks in around British boardrooms, it will give new strength no doubt to the rearguard action against the report, which has already successfully delayed full incorporation in the Stock Exchange listing rules and led to a row about pension disclosure.But there is a more fundamental reason why the corporate governance bandwagon has probably rolled about as far as it can go for the moment.

The most important Greenbury recommendation, he believes, is that the remuneration committee chairman will attend the AGM to answer shareholders' questions on pay.The corollary is that before they can justify high pay, companies will first have to spell outthe corporate performance objectives at which they are aiming Very few now do. He has also sided with the CBI view that in some areas - such as smaller quoted companies - a certain amount of deregulation of the new rules might be desirable.The Greenbury report was written in haste, under political pressure. Ever since, companies have been discovering awkward new side-effects that did not leap from the page when they first read it.Geoff Lindey, a City fund manager who was the National Association of Pension Funds representative on the Greenbury Committee, found another yesterday in a speech to the association's autumn conference. He made clear that his work will focus on consolidation, not continuing revolution.Sir Ronnie, the chairman of ICI, believes that it will take at least two sets of annual reports to see how Greenbury has bedded down. It is often associated in the proletarian mind with a censorious upbringing and regular birchings In fact, Mr Staunton is not an Old Etonian.