To counter this it is important for chief executives to build the kind of favourable image that only, er, PR companies can generate through cultivating the press.Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Reputation is important, especially for consumer brands, but it should not be confused with popularity. Nor should chief executives get too carried away with how many favourable column inches their cuttings agencies produce. He comes bottom of the poll with a "favourability rating" of minus 193. Most, if not all, of which is down presumably to his little local difficulty recently over pay.The authors of the report, a PR company, assert that loss of reputation is one of the biggest threats to business. Guess who is more popular with the City.The Square Mile cannot get enough of Fred "the Shred" Goodwin, the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, and nor apparently, can the financial media, which has treated him to the most favourable coverage of any FTSE 100 boss, according to a survey out today.In contrast, the name of Jean-Pierre Garnier at GlaxoSmithKline is Mudd.

All of which still points to Egg beating a retreat from its international ambitions come the new year.Popularity contestOne man is Scottish, the other French One has cut thousands of jobs, the other a few hundred. One talks of "mercy killings" while the other seeks ways of prolonging life. A fellow UK bank can be pretty much ruled out which appears to leave another European financial institution.But the talks are at an early stage and Egg has only given them another two months to reach a successful conclusion. After 18 months, Egg still only has 58,000 French customers with balances totalling €126m. In the UK its customer base grew by almost three times that number in the last quarter alone.There are some faint signs that things are beginning to come right in France. Balances are growing more quickly and another eight credit cards have been launched since Egg took the plunge, bringing some big retail names like Carrefour into the market and increasing customer awareness.

But the improvement is too little and too late for Egg to justify finding the extra €130m of investment the business needs on its own.The rumour in France is that the potential partners Egg is talking to do not include a big local name. (Since you ask, a convenient way of managing your cashflow, not a ruinously expensive way to borrow according to the Egg head, Paul Gratton. Perhaps Matt Barrett should take him along to the next Select Committee hearing.)The result has been miserably slow progress. It therefore found itself having to give the French elementary lessons in what a credit card is. Add to that a 50 per cent annual growth in internet usage and Egg and the French ought to have been made for one another.But Egg counted without customer inertia and some very effective knocking copy from its rivals.