BP may finally have got its man, but a number of other companies remain chairmanless amid fears that the role at some of Britain's biggest companies may have become just too unpalatable.

Major FTSE 100 companies who are still searching for a new chairman include Lloyds Banking Group whose chairman Sir Victor Blank has been highlighted as a belated scapegoat for the banking crisis, and J Sainsbury, which lost Philip Hampton who quit to nearly double his salary and take the £750,000-a-year post heading stricken Royal Bank of Scotland.

Anglo American, Legal & General and Standard Chartered are among other leading companies who have been searching for a new chairman, while the role at Marks & Spencer has come back into the spotlight.

While shareholders previously waved through the elevation of Sir Stuart Rose to become executive chairman of M&S many are reckoned to be having second thoughts on this flagrant breach of corporate governance rules. Those rules say the chairman and chief executive roles should be split to prevent the concentration of too much boardroom power.

Headhunters admit the financial crisis has played its part in the apparent chairman shortage as a new era of truculent shareholders makes the role less appealing.

BP's chief executive Tony Hayward today put a recession-related but alternative spin on the difficulties of recruiting a chairman.

"History will tell us we have been caught up in the most extraordinary financial crisis for at least 80 years. We had candidates withdraw because of the circumstances they found themselves in their own company," he said.

"A lot of potential candidates are just not putting themselves forward because they are caught up by the impact on their own current roles."

One by-product of this apparent reluctance to take on the top roles however has been inflation: major British companies now routinely pay their part-time chairman in excess of £600,000 a year for not much more than a 100 days a year.