Dashwood: Tide turns in Nat Rothschild's favour in yacht dispute

Tony snubs Sony board

The game of musical chairs in the Sony boardroom continues.

After Sony Music’s UK chairman and CEO Nick Gatfield, a former trumpeter in Dexys Midnight Runners, ran out of puff last month , Dashwood learns that the Sony board tried to sweet-talk the former chairman of EMI Music UK, Tony Wadsworth, into filling Gatfield’s shoes.

It would have been a sound move for Sony.

Wadsworth, who left EMI three months after private equity tycoon Guy Hands took control in 2007, has the ear of artistes The Rolling Stones, fronted by Mick Jagger, right, Radiohead and Queen.

Within months of Wadsworth’s exit they, too, had quit in protest against the suits running the show.

But Gatfield, despite persistent overtures from Sony, has no interest in the gig. It seems his present pursuits chairing the Brit Awards and trade body the BPI keep his hands full enough.

---------------------------------------

Shareholders in WPP Group will be interested to hear that the advertising giant’s CEO, Sir Martin Sorrell, is even larger than life within the confines of his own home.

Dashwood hears the media mogul has four large portraits hanging in the garage of his house in Mayfair, West London. Unusually, the pictures are all of himself.

Dashwood contacted Sir Martin to find out the name of the painter behind these towering tableaux, but was told: “No artists – just stuff my wife thought was better suited to the garage.”

The mind boggles at the size of the canvasses on display in the main house.

-------------------------------------------------

harriet.dennys@telegraph.co.uk

more