The Current Account does not like to see directors even retired executives - flogging shares in their company, so was a bit concerned to notice Crean non-executive Joe O'Sullivan unload his entire 265,900 shares at the rock bottom price of 95p in the past few days. It seems, however, that Mr O'Sullivan (69) passed the shares on to members of his family and did not simply sell them into the market.

Still, Crean's broker Davy is steadfastly loyal to the ailing industrial holding company which seems to find it extraordinarily difficult to stick with any particular corporate strategy for any length of time.

Splitting the print and packaging business from the rest of Crean is only the latest in a series of moves in which the market has so far to put much trust. Given the appalling record of Crean management, it's not hard to see why the market has yet to put its faith in the Crean demerger plan.

But broker Davy sees light at the end of the tunnel for Crean and believes that "the inherent value in Crean can start to be realised in the first instance with these demerger proposals". Davy put a sum of the parts valuation of 170p on Crean shares on the basis of what admittedly seems conservative multiples for the various bits of Crean, 7.3 times forecast earnings per share for print and packaging, six times earnings per share for the food division, and a nominal £1 for the electrical wholesaling division in Britain.