London Briefing: Wanted: Chief executive to restore fortunes of faded media company. Must be strong on the creative side but also able to deal with unhappy investors. Broad shoulders an advantage. Immediate start.
Although the board of ITV has not quite descended to placing advertisements in the situations vacant columns, it's getting close.
One after one, candidates tipped as front-runners for the toughest job in British broadcasting have ruled themselves out of the running to replace Charles Allen, who announced his departure in August.
Last week, former BAA chief executive Mike Clasper made it clear he was not interested in the role. A non-executive on the ITV board since the start of the year, he had been hotly tipped to take over the reins of Britain's largest commercial broadcasting company.
Andy Duncan, chief executive of rival Channel 4, has already ruled himself out and the list of suitable candidates is getting shorter by the day. And it is not just the chief executive's chair that needs to be filled: ITV chairman Peter Burt has apparently told friends he wants to stand down once the new chief executive is in place.
The rest of the board is also coming under close scrutiny, with some institutional investors concerned that they lack the experience and energy required for today's fast-moving media world. There are three bankers among the directors, one of whom, Sir Brian Pitman (ex-Lloyds TSB) is 74. Another director, Sir George Russell, a former chairman of the venture capital group 3i, is 70.
Boardroom upheaval is the last thing ITV needs. Formed through the merger of Carlton and Granada in 2004, it is struggling to compete with the plethora of new challengers in the digital broadcasting world.
Viewing figures and advertising revenues have slumped, as has its share price, now just one-quarter of what it was when the two companies merged. The shares recently dipped below 100p, although they have been supported by vague talk of a bid from private equity interests. Six months ago, the group rejected a 130p a share private equity consortium offer.
There was more bad news earlier this week as broker UBS downgraded its recommendation on the group from "buy" to "neutral", after cutting its earnings forecasts by up to 19 per cent. UBS is gloomy on prospects for the wider British advertising market, which it predicts will grow by just 1.2 per cent. Advertising at its flagship ITV1 channel is forecast to fall by as much as 13 per cent this year and 10 per cent next year.
Against this dismal commercial background, ITV urgently needs strong leadership and a credible strategy for survival in the web-enhanced media world.
It was the City that demanded Charles Allen's resignation and now it wants to see swift action on his successor. To be fair, it should be remembered that the BBC took more than four months before replacing Greg Dyke as director-general when it appointed Mark Thompson from Channel 4.
ITV insiders insist that the recruitment process remains on track, despite Clasper's very public refusal to consider the post.
But the fear now among its shareholders is that the unsettled board will be spooked into making the wrong decision, or that it will allow the search for Allen's successor to drag on for months - and then make the wrong decision.
City's biggest losers
The City of London has seen nothing like it since the dotcom bubble burst five years ago. More than €4 billion was wiped from the stock market value of the internet gaming sector last week as the US authorities moved to outlaw their operations.
PartyGaming, the biggest in the online gambling business, saw its value slashed by €2.5 billion in the space of just a few minutes, as its share price halved. Yesterday, as the repercussions of the US decision swept through the sector, PartyGaming was ejected from the FTSE 100 index of Britain's leading shares.
While PartyGaming insists it can survive, the crisis deepened for some of its smaller rivals: World Gaming is teetering on the brink and on Monday called a halt to dealings in its shares "due to a fundamental uncertainty over its ability to continue trading".
At rival Empire Online, chairman Lord Steinberg resigned, ostensibly to spend more time in the House of Lords. His is the latest in a series of departures by non-executive directors in the sector and follows the high-profile arrests of several online gaming company executives in the US.
David Carruthers, chief executive of BETonSPORTS, was arrested in July while travelling through Texas and Sportingbet chairman Peter Dicks was arrested at New York's JFK Airport last month. There has been talk of the industry mounting a legal challenge to the US move to outlaw payments by bank and credit card companies to online gaming sites. But such an action would take years to proceed through the courts, with no guarantee of success. For companies such as World Gaming, which made more than 95 per cent of its money across the Atlantic, that is time they simply do not have.
Fiona Walsh writes for the Guardian newspaper in London
