Next year's AGM will be held in the flower and produce tent
There is a perception that the typical investment trust shareholders are a retired colonel and his twin-setted wife.

This is not an impression dispelled by going to an annual meeting of any of the funds, although Business Diary recollects from one visit to the AGM of the venerable Foreign & Colonial Investment that the fragile old dear who shuffled in ahead front of us showed a surprising lightness of heel when lunch was served.

Many trusts are now undertaking marketing initiatives to bring in new investors. The board of Foreign & Colonial, which at 140 years-old next week makes the 135-year-old Scottish American Investment Trust run by Edinburgh's Baillie Gifford look like an upstart whipper-snapper, is trying to get in on the game. But we are not entirely convinced about the rationale behind its latest strategy.

Buried in its report and accounts published this week was the following statement: "We need to work hard to promote Foreign & Colonial to new investors, and as part of our marketing initiatives in 2008 we are sponsoring a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, as we believe there is a good match between keen gardeners and potential investors in our shares."

Going up and down in our estimation
It is always interesting when meeting a chief executive of a large company to consider the lift test.

Is this someone you could maintain conversation with if stuck in a elevator?

Weir Group chief Mark Selway is probably not that popular with the employees of the Weir Pumps division he sold off in controversial circumstances last year.

However, his affable Aussie charm would make him a decent lift companion.

Business Diary is less convinced that this is man you would share a car journey with.

This is Selway when asked by The Herald about a recent acquisition: "It is like a used car: you do not really find out where the squeaks and rattles are until you give it a good hammering."

Putting the tie into retirement
As Sir Ken Morrison departed the retailing sector last week, another Morrison institution went with him.

His trademark yellow and black tie is shuffling into retirement, much to the relief, one suspects, of the sartorially impeccable chief executive Marc Bolland and Morrison's successor as chairman Sir Ian Gibson.

In a rather unexpected Helen of Troy moment, he told assembled journalists: "My frequently commented-upon tie is going with me into retirement. This is the tie that launched a thousand shops."

Morrison actually only managed to establish a 375-store empire. Not bad work ,though, for a man who took over his father's egg and milk stalls 55 years ago.

businessdiary@theherald.co.uk