With British Gas, and to a certain extent, mm02, because it is such a regulated business you have to have an in-house legal function which instills in the people who work in the organisation the rules of the game. At mm02 in particular, we have seen a real attempt to try and minimise the amount of work the legal department has to do in post accident care. My job is to make sure that we run this business as efficiently and effectively as we can to generate shareholder wealth and that has caused the legal side to be more involved in preventative care in training.

When there is a real crisis – that is when your external advisers come in. What you really want in the room is the wisest person who has seen many of these things before. For most of the people in the room, it will be the first time they have seen a big event like a takeover. Whereas your professional advisers will have seen lots of these. At the end of the day the board is paid to make the decision, we cannot delegate that, but we can at least understand what the dimensions are.