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Executives at Clinton Cards are unlikely to be on Pirc's Christmas card list. The shareholder body, which took on Barclays earlier this week, issued a strongly worded critique of the company's management last night, highlighting concerns over the way it's run.
It may pale into insignificance when placed beside the excesses of the banking sector, where executives were paying themselves millions as their employees persuaded people with no money to take out colossal mortgages, but if Pirc can embarrass corporate giants like Barclays, it can easily shame retailing minnows based in Essex.
Clinton Cards is a small business, built by its founder Don Lewin, a Londoner who used to work as a chimney sweep, and it's difficult not to admire his success.
I expect he regards Pirc as a bunch of over-zealous box tickers, and it's true that its demands for good corporate governance sometimes seems ridiculous when they are applied to tiny companies who don't have big boards and run relatively streamlined operations.
Unfortunately for Lewin, they may have a point this time.
Lewin, who founded the company in the late 60s, is the chairman and chief executive of the listed group, worth around £26m, an arrangement guaranteed to get the corporate governance lobby into a frenzy.
But he also employs two of his children as directors and Pirc claims there is only one truly independent non-executive director on its 10-strong board. Lewin named his company after his son Clinton Lewin (left), who is MD, and has been waiting to succeed his father for years. Don Lewin's daughter Debbie Darlington (nee Lewin) joined the company in 1985 and was appointed to the board in 2000.
Both of them know the business inside out and evidently do a good job - the company consistently produces healthy profits - and there are no signs of a shareholder rebellion - yet. But Pirc is advising its members to vote against approving the company's report and accounts at its AGM on Tuesday.
Worse still, according to Pirc, there is little information about pay, the highest paid director receives one of the largest salaries in the quoted retail sector, and there are no details about the amount paid into pension schemes.
The Lewin family owns 32% of Clinton Cards, which made pre-tax profits of £19.5m this year. There are far larger companies who operate in a similar fashion - Rupert Murdoch's media empire is one - and shareholders are generally happy to turn a blind eye to corporate governance issues providing they make lots of money and pay decent dividends. A healthy share price helps too, but Clinton's has fallen from around 60p at the end of 2007 and stood at 13p this morning. It will be interesting to see whether there are mutterings of dissent next week.
A source close to the company points out that it had strong family connections, and that under Lewin's guidance it has "grown from a very small concern in Loughton, Essex to one of the country's biggest card retailers". It is familiar with Pirc's complaints, although it hadn't seen the group's latest alert, and believes it is fixated on issues that few shareholders are concerned about.
Strangely, Pirc omits to mention that Don Lewin recently turned 75, and this year also marks the 40th anniversary of the company's formation, and 20 years since its stockmarket flotation. That might seem like a good time to step back from the business, or hand over control of the company to his son - after a thorough, and completely transparent search for a suitable successor, of course.
The last time there was a downturn in the City, the company made 'redundancy cards', and in the current environment it must be thinking about dusting off those designs. Don Lewin's retirement card, however, seems to be stuck in the post.
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