Or rather wouldn't the environment benefit from having these weighty tomes winging their way electronically across the Internet except where shareholders have opted to continue to receive them through the post.

Many companies already provide an electronic alternative to the traditional report and accounts but it needs to become standard practice.

You don't have to be a fully paid-up tree hugger to be concerned about the unnecessary waste of resources involved in the compiling, printing, and delivery of an annual report.

The cost is born by you the shareholder - and the environment. The reports should be archived so that it is easier to test whether chairmen have delivered on their promises.

They will also be a lot easier to read - if made website friendly - allowing those who want to to magnify the size of print.

Proxy card...

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Increasing numbers of top executives I meet on my City forays have abandoned their ties in the cause of a more relaxed image.

Some can't carry off their dress-down look and remind me of High Court judges who remove their wigs not to terrify child witnesses.

But others (usually the younger ones) do seem genuinely happy to be free of the necessity to wear a tie even though they look as though they got dressed in a hurry.

I have worn a tie all my working life and feel undressed without one in a business environment. Should a couple be my lot on Father's Day, I will happy with the gifts - as I am every year.

But I'm not wedded to what is a useless strip of material and wouldn't wear a tie at weekends outside of a wedding or funeral.

Wikipedia has a fascinating section on the history of neckties but I bet even former public schoolboys will not be able to rely on the Old School Tie to recognise each other much into the f...

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It would have been inappropriate, he explained at the time, despite the airline homing in on record annual profits.

I bet a lot of City bosses have been cursing Walsh's move ever since it was revealed last month.

On several occasions since then shareholders have stood up at agms to compare their board's greed unfavourably with Walsh's decision.

I expect this will happen time and again because it is the exception that proves the rule that in UK business we have become locked in to rewarding failure.

On a general point I have never understood why fat bonuses were necessary to incentivise executives who are paid handsome basic salaries among their many benefits.

This is made more infuriating when their rewards seem to have become detached from performance. I know if incompetence were a crime we'd need a lot more prisons but there doesn't seem to be even contrition - whether genuine or not - exhibited by business people especially in the financial services sector when events turn sour.

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