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Don't chuck the pilot out of the plane in the middle of a storm," is the sort of thing Marks & Spencer boss Sir Stuart Rose is fond of saying when deflecting criticism about his company's performance.
His point is that even the worst pilot has a better chance of avoiding a crash landing than an unmanned plane, and after all, the pilot is not to blame for the bad weather.
When he announced a profits warning last July, Rose said the UK was in the midst of "the fastest and most severe slowdown since the early 1990s". He was right about that, and even those in the City less than certain about his claims as a retail genius were inclined to think that he probably was the best man to be in charge - if only in the absence of a credible internal replacement.
Since then, there's been a debate about whether the company's woes are self-inflicted or just a function of a horrible market.
Yesterday Tony Shiret of Credit Suisse stuck his head high above the parapet to state clearly: it's not the market - it's you, mate.
"The current financial performance largely results from the strategies adopted by the current management rather than market conditions, which in our view have highlighted their inadequacy," he writes.
Shiret's 100-odd page missive on the state of M&S is brutal: punches are not pulled. His argument is that Rose has done little in his five-year tenure to turn the company around. Profits got an uplift thanks to some cost-cutting in year one, since then the strategy on food has been confused and old customers are not being replaced by new ones, partly because the clothes offering is as dowdy as ever.
Shiret writes: "We believe that M&S profits are heading to a position where investors will be forced to address the company's repeated inability to establish a sustainable positioning in its clothing offer, and the rapidly deteriorating position of its food business that has only become apparent recently." The share price agrees with this analysis.
"Forced to address" is surely code for "bundle out of the door". Indeed, Shiret's note, none too subtly, is called "Do the right thing".
Chatting to other sector watchers and investors yesterday, not all are sure Rose should go, but there is a growing mutinous feeling.
Rose's supporters note that, unlike Shiret, their man has a track record of making money for retail investors. Given the carnage in the sector, why pick on Sir Stuart? They also suggest that a wholescale repositioning of the company can't be done in current market conditions anyway -- it's a case of battling through.
A favourite replacement for Rose, whenever he does step down, is Justin King at Sainsbury - though King might claim to be perfectly happy where he is. Rose and King don't get on, but that's only a problem if the Sainsbury man is expected to come in as chief executive below a booted-upstairs Sir Stuart.
All that's probably in the future, but it could turn out to be more immediate than the M&S board yet realises.
The next dividend payment looks vital. Panmure Gordon and Credit Suisse think it has to be cut - Rose has been fairly clear it won't be. If things slide so far that he is forced to cut the divi, the City might conclude the time to drop the pilot has arrived.
Time to call this City bluff
The flashy centre-midfielder wanders into the manager's office at the end of the season and demands to know why he hasn't been given a medal. “Medal?” says the manager, nonplussed. “We got relegated. We played like tulips. We were awful.”
The midfielder fires back: “I wasn't awful. I was at least average. And if you don't give me a medal, I'm going to join that other team up the road.”
“They got relegated too,” says the manager. “But I don't want you to leave — I need people who aren't completely hopeless.”
This is roughly the scenario being acted out by bankers and traders across the City just now — we might have gone bust, but it wasn't my fault and I expect the same million I got last year.
Most people aren't to blame for the recession — not dentists, teachers or heart surgeons — but all expect this year to be harder than last.
It takes a special sort of arrogance to imagine you are the only people in the world who should feel no pain from the recession, even though your own industry was at the heart of its creation. Yet that's how many in the City think. Most aren't actually that brilliant. Their bluff should have been called long ago.
Shares could be dead for the rest of your life, says Gross
As financial storm clouds were brewing last March, I offered some investment advice: sell everything.
Since then the FTSE 100 is down about 2000 points — 35% — so it is time for this update: sell everything.
Supposed stock-market gurus and others who speak in clichés like to say that when newspaper articles predicting the death of equities start appearing, it's time to buy.
But such types see buy signals everywhere — and they've been calling the bottom of this market all the way down.
The losses from the banking crisis are so spectacular, and as yet so unrealised, that it's tempting to say there is no meaningful equity left anywhere.
Perhaps that's dramatic, but those trying to make a case for a recovery any time soon are focusing on small shooting trees and ignoring all of the dead wood.
President Obama says if his stimulus package doesn't work we are looking at a “lost decade”.But even if the stimulus does stabilise the economy, it doesn't follow that stocks will rally.
Bill Gross, pictured right, who manages the giant $747 billion US bond fund Pimco, agrees. Gross argues that for shares to flourish, given that equity holders are the last in line to be paid after lenders, bondholders and those with preferred stock, there needs to be economic growth.
If there's going to be zero economic growth (at best) then there's no point in owning common stock.
Shares are dead for the rest of your life, in other words.
Gross, of course, has a vested interest as a bond investor, but also a track record that is hard to ignore.
Shares are sold to the public on the basis that they are the best chance for us to get rich, to own a piece of the pie.
Look at a graph of the stock market since 1945, say the brokers — hey! shares always go up, in the end.
There are long periods, decades at a time, when this just is not so.
