UK: THE SORRY SAGA OF SHARE OPTIONS.

A difficult birth was beginning to give way to a promising future - until Kenneth Clarke decided to step in. Must the tax break on share options be closed so cack-handedly? Chris Blackhurst.

Looking back on it now it was a crazy period. Fat cat frenzy in the press was at its height; Cedric Brown, the quiet, technocrat chief executive of British Gas had, incredibly, become the most hated man in Britain; one of the highest paid executives in Britain, Sir Richard Greenbury, had been asked to chair a committee into directors' remuneration - a role in which he was distinctly uncomfortable and ill-suited; and Labour was having a field day.