Lloyds looks a better horse to back in the bank reprivatisation race Inside Lloyds there is certainly an expectation that a disposal could be imminent, with the second half of this year seen as a potential window for a first sale. Any sale would be hugely symbolic, marking the first time the taxpayer has been able to get back any of its £70bn "investment" left over from the financial crisis five years ago. It is unlikely that a disposal would generate the amounts of money that would allow George Osborne a major pre-election splurge, but the Chancellor would be delighted with any boost to the beleaguered public finances, however modest. It would also allow him to argue that reforms of the banking sector have provided a stable underpinning for Lloyds and RBS to be returned to private ownership. And, for the banking industry, which has been under merciless attack from its critics ever since the financial crisis, it would show what has been achieved with responsible stewardship at the helm. Hayward's three-year turnaround complete I'd like my life back. So said Tony Hayward in June 2010, at the height of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the worst oil spill in US history. Then chief executive of BP, Hayward was giving the outside world a glimpse of the very real toll the oil giant's American troubles were having on his state of mind. Within a matter of months, having been branded the "most hated man in America," he had gone from the company he'd spent the previous 28 years working for, and eventually leading, and disappeared from public view. The 30 months that have followed his departure from BP have been something of an elongated corporate rehabilitation programme. In the autumn of 2011, he reappeared as the chief executive of London-listed Genel Energy - the brainchild of financier Nat Rothschild and former Goldman Sachs rising star Julian Metherell - as part of a $2.1bn (£1.37bn) takeover of a Kurdistan oil producer. That role has allowed Hayward to remain firmly in the oil industry without courting the sort of adverse publicity he previously encountered. That was until Thursday, when, after a fractious annual meeting for newly merged Glencore Xstrata, Hayward was named interim chairman of the FTSE 100 commodities giant. To go from hero to zero to hero in the space of less than three years is no mean feat, and the fact that he has risen - however temporarily - to the top of another of the UK's 20 largest companies by market capitalisation is impressive in itself. But no matter what it says about Hayward, who has been Glencore's senior independent director since it floated in the May of 2011, his selection as interim chairman actually says more about the newly formed Glencore Xstrata. With more than 80pc of those who voted choosing not to re-elect Xstrata chairman Sir John Bond, and with votes against the re-election of three other former Xstrata directors, and the resignation of a fifth - who doubtless saw the writing on the wall - the combined company's board is now entirely an Xstrata-free zone. This presumably suits Ivan Glasenberg, the chief executive of the company who has overseen its creation and, with an 8.3pc stake, is far more aligned to its success than many of his FTSE peers are to the fates of their charges. But with a governance vacuum at the top of the company, is it such good news for other shareholders? Scottish Widows, a top 30 shareholder, said after yesterday's meeting that what matters now is to find an "independent chairman" who can, in time, refresh the board. Although many of the "no" votes against Xstrata directors related to the way in which they handled the initial merger approach from Glencore in February 2012, Glasenberg would do well to listen to Scottish Widows, and to study the voting patterns displayed, should he not want to similarly fall foul of his institutional shareholder base in the future. Attractions of a gap year for the older worker South Africa's richest man, Johann Rupert, has coined a new phrase: "The grey gap year." He has announced that, after 25 years at luxury goods group Richemont, he plans to take a year's sabbatical. "I think I have the right to just take a break," he explained. I just want to be master of my own time. The 62-year-old chairman plans to read 50 books and perhaps travel to Antarctica. Is it an idea that could catch on here? Cynics will observe that, for a billionaire, taking an unpaid gap year is hardly much of a hardship. Yet, as Mark Littlewood, director-general of the Institute of Directors, pointed out on Thursday, if the norm in modern Britain continues to be that people enter the labour market at 21 and retire at 65, increasing numbers of us will spend less than half our lives in gainful employment. The realistic alternative, as we know, is that many of us will end up working much longer, probably into our 70s. In which case, the idea of a 12-month pause for breath - be it to devour those classic novels one has never got around to reading, going on a world tour or simply pottering in the garden - begins to look a very attractive proposition.