Outlook: Arnold has all the Luq as Abbey National gets its man

MyTravel lessons; Motoring slowly; End of the line

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Abbey sees off BoI and hires ex-UBS boss as chief executive

Rivals ready to pounce if MyTravel goes under

Travel tycoon fights to prevent ruin as riches turn to rags

Tourism conference clouded by falling shares and terrorism

Dejected Railtrack investors vote for winding-up

Outlook

Luqman Arnold has not even started work as Abbey National's new chief executive and already he has earned his first year's salary and bonus (£1.15m since you ask). News of his appointment was less than eight hours old when Bank of Ireland threw in the towel and withdrew its £10bn bid. Perhaps its logic for bidding was, after all, no more compelling than the simple fact that it had a chief executive when Abbey didn't.

Terry Burns, the ex-Treasury mandarin who reluctantly agreed to double up as Abbey chairman and chief executive after Ian Harley was shown the door in July, expressed satisfaction that he had got his man.

And in double quick time as well. It is only a month ago that the headhunters first rang Mr Arnold to enquire whether he fancied going back to work, having spent the past year doing not very much since falling out with the chairman of UBS, Marcel Ospel.

Abbey is slumming it after UBS and even at £675,000, the basic salary is an insult by investment banking standards. But Mr Arnold's big advantage is that he was available.

That is not, of course, the main reason why he has been hired, no sir. He shares a "common vision" with Lord Burns although what that is we will not see until Abbey produces its pre-close trading statement in November.

Some of the analysts think that the online bank Cahoot and the life business Scottish Mutual may not be part of the long-term picture, even though Lord Burns describes them as "core".

What Abbey needs is someone who can re-build its reputation as a retail bank and yet most of Mr Arnold's 30 years in banking have been spent as an investment banker. Still, he knows Abbey's finance director, Stephen Hester, from their days together at Credit Suisse First Boston and retail customers are retail customers whether they are Swiss or British.

His track record of problem solving at UBS means that Mr Arnold deserves any honeymoon period he gets. How long that will last, however, is another matter since BoI's tilt at Abbey has probably whetted appetites elsewhere.

The good news for the Arnold household is that Abbey's new chief executive stands to come up smelling of roses whatever happens. Either they prosper together or Abbey gets taken over and he walks away with two years' money. Some guys have all the Luq.

MyTravel lessons

David Crossland sends his apologies but he is not able to deliver his speech "40 highly successful years in the travel industry" at this weekend's annual get together in Cairo. The founder and chairman of MyTravel has more pressing business to attend to. The same goes for Mytravel's finance director, David Jardine. But that will not stop the bars of Cairo being full of speculation about who is going to pick the carcass clean of this once mighty tour operator.

The company again attempted to draw a line in the sand yesterday by reassuring investors that it was not in breach of its banking covenants. But the renewed slide in the share price showed what the market thought of the reassurances.

The accounting black hole into which Mytravel has fallen makes a bid for the company highly unlikely. In any event, the autumn is not the time to buy a tour operator just as revenues dry up while costs keep on rising. It would be simpler to let the business sink under the weight of its own negative publicity.

The linkages between MyTravel's predicament now and the demise of Harry Goodman's Intasun a decade ago are striking. Indeed it was the collapse of the Goodman empire which enabled Mr Crossland to transform a regional tour operator called Airtours into a national operation overnight. Cunningly, Mr Crossland did not buy any of Mr Goodman's International Leisure Group empire but simply sent his managers out to sign up the hoteliers.

For Mr Crossland, the demise of MyTravel would be a crushing end to a glowing career. But there is no sentiment in business and it would be remarkable if a similar jockeying for position was not now taking place. Mr Crossland, of all people, would understand.

Motoring slowly

The caravan moves on next week to the British International Motor Show in Birmingham. The last time the industry met at the National Exhibition Centre two years ago, MG Rover had just been rescued from BMW. As a mark of appreciation to all those Midlanders who helped save it from closure, the new owners decided not to bother putting in an appearance.

For now, MG Rover is off the critical list. Admittedly, it is yet to sign a definitive deal with the Chinese to build a new medium-sized car on which the long-term future of Longbridge depends. But the company still has a big chunk left of the £500m dowry BMW bestowed on it.

The Rover crisis caught Stephen Byers asleep at the wheel at the Department of Trade and Industry and his successor, Patricia Hewitt, is determined not to get caught out in the same way.

Top of her worry list is Peugeot in Coventry. It has a popular model in the 206 but a decrepit plant in Ryton. If the site has to have a future as the location for the successor model the 207, then it needs £250m of investment. The French owners have already warned that they are looking at rival sites in France and eastern Europe but the Government's scope to intervene with state aid is negligible.

The other worry of DTI officials is Jaguar's Halewood site on Merseyside. Though modernised thanks to heavy investment by the parent company Ford and the Government, its product, the new X-series baby Jag is not selling well. A case of right site, wrong model.

When it comes to the motor industry, the Government's headaches just don't go away.

End of the line

So, farewell then Railtrack. A voluntary solvent liquidation was not what the Conservatives had in mind when they privatised you in 1996. Nor was it what the board had planned until Stephen Byers pulled the plug a year ago. But look at it this way. The stock market has fallen by 25 per cent since Railtrack went into administration last October, but the value of Railtrack shares has only dropped by 10 per cent. Raise a glass, if you dare to Mr Byers this weekend. Shareholders need a few more politicians with his flair for a good investment.

m.harrison@independent.co.uk