Corporate excess has staged a comeback

The corporate excesses of the 1980s seemed to have largely disappeared along with the puffball skirts and shoulder pads.

A tightening of corporate governance rules, spearheaded by the Cadbury, Greenbury and Hampel reports, appeared to have put an end to the private jets, luxury mansions and lavish parties, if not the fat salaries that characterised the lifestyle of many executives during that swashbuckling decade.

But the recent allegations in Britain that prompted the resignation of Greg Hutchings as chief executive of Tomkins turned the clock back.

The tale is all too familiar: a flamboyant and controversial boss of a conglomerate is accused of using corporate jets and houses paid for with shareholders' money for his own benefit, while running the company in an autocratic manner.

For seasoned observers of corporate life it was all rather nostalgic.

Mr Hutchings' alleged excesses were reminiscent of the episode when the Hanson conglomerate was found to have invested in several racehorses owned by Gordon White, Lord Hanson's trusted lieutenant.

The use of private aircraft, one of the key allegations against Mr Hutchings, is one of the recurring themes in the history of corporate excess.

Jets became an emblem of corporate machismo and during the 1970s and the 1980s they were a must-have item for any ambitious executive.

Ross Johnson, the head of RJR Nabisco during the bitter takeover battle with the private equity group Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts, took the use of corporate jets to new extremes.

According to Barbarians at the Gate, the famous book on the Nabisco battle, when his German shepherd dog Rocco bit a security guard in Palm Springs, the Johnson's household worried that the dog might be quarantined or seized by the authorities.

The solution came in the form of RJR Nabisco's corporate plane. A senior vice-president was charged with escorting Rocco, registered on the passengers' records as G Shepherd, onto a secret flight from Palm Springs to Winston-Salem where the long arm of the law could not reach it.

Not even Gerry Robinson, the chairman of Granada, could resist the temptation of the corporate jet.

During the hostile bid for Forte, he criticised the hotel group's ownership of an aircraft and said it would be high on the list of assets to be sold once Granada took over.

But after buying Forte, he decided to keep it, after finding rather useful.

Now the young thrusting executives of new-economy companies seemed to have taken to the habit too.

Boo.com, the trendy sportswear e-tailer, collapsed in May amid rumours that its large cash burn had been partly driven by substantial expenses on parties and airfares.

Corporate governance specialists deny that these stories signal a return to the days of ballooning expense accounts.

"If the Hutchings allegations are true, this would be an example of corporate excesses but it is a rare example," says John Rogers, a director at the National Association of Pension Funds, which represents the UK's pensions funds.

He believes that the tighter corporate governance rules introduced over the past few years are sufficient, if properly applied, to keep the waste of shareholders' money to a minimum.

Other observers point out that the large increase in executives' pay packages means that top bosses do not need to award themselves excessive perks.

According to William Mercer, the remuneration consultants, the value of share bonuses for top executives has doubled over the past year, taking pay packages in the UK nearer to the levels seen in the US.

However, some observers believe the toughening of corporate governance scrutiny is encouraging some executives to leave the publicly-quoted sector.

Over the past few months, a number of senior industrialists have moved into the booming private equity business, where they enjoy handsome rewards and are shielded from the public gaze. One of the key targets of the campaign for better corporate governance has been the dual role of chairman and chief executive, one of the issues that soured Mr Hutchings' relations with shareholders.

The concentration of powers in one person is seen as weakening the board's control over the chief executive's actions.

The Hampel committee on corporate governance recommended "a clear division of responsibilities at the head of the company which will ensure a balance of power and authority such that no one individual has unfettered powers of decision".

However, a survey by the National Association of Pension Funds found that some 7 per cent of the FTSE 350 companies still had one person carrying out both roles.

According to Mr Rogers, the responsibility to ensure proper corporate governance lies with the non-executive directors.

"The Hutchings allegations demonstrate the importance of having independent non-executive directors on the board. You need strong people who can get to grips with these chief executives and sort them out," he says.

Many former executives must feel glad that they had their heyday in the 1970s and 1980s.

The idea that chief executives could be "sorted out" by non-executive directors would have been considered blasphemous then. As one entrepreneur of the time once famously said: "Non-executive directors? They are just Christmas decorations."