Over the week it has made steady progress.Supporting shares were mixed. The mid cap ended a 10-day winning streak - even if progress was modest - with a 3.8-point fall to 4,652.2. If the group is taken over the non-hotel interests will be sold, but at a much more leisurely pace than the present break-up envisages. If buyers for the breweries cannot be found they will, after a suitable marketing time, be shut.In the summer Vaux shares hit 360p Break-up value is thought to be around 430p a share.

But the bidder, it would seem, wanted the group's Swallow Hotels chain - the rest of the business would be dumped.Although the talks, thought to be with the Stakis hotel chain, were eventually aborted, Vaux took the message to heart and decided to break itself into two - retaining the hotels and its top-of-the-barrel pubs and selling its two breweries and remaining 350 pubs.Director Frank Nicholson is endeavouring to put together a package to take on at least part of the brewing and associated pub businesses, but there are indications that he is having a tough time raising the necessary support.The latest story is that another bid is being prepared, with the hotels once again the major attraction. VAUX, the brewing and hotels group which has again become a favourite punt of the takeover speculators, was back in the bid frame. The shares frothed 16p higher to 218.5p as stories circulated that a strike was planned to block the Sunderland-based group's proposed brewing and hotel split. Earlier this year Vaux, a long-time takeover candidate, soared as a bid approach was disclosed. And yet it was because of delays in supplies of software from Nortel that Ionica finds itself in its present pickle, just 12 weeks away from calling in the receivers.To add insult to injury, the board decided to award itself pounds 75,000 in bonus payments last year. Admittedly, the bonuses relate to the company's performance in the year before its public listing, but did none of the directors feel it would have been appropriate to waive their entitlements in the circumstances?Normally, this would be meat and drink to shareholders who have been treated in such shocking fashion.And yet the board only had to field one question about its arrangements with Nortel and none on the subject of executive pay.Indeed, the only time the meeting became what might vaguely be described as animated was when one shareholder complained that the start time of 10.30 in the morning had prevented her from buying a cheap day-return ticket.Perhaps Ionica's shareholders are past caring Or perhaps they have got the board they deserve..

For all its support for the free market and its Third Way philosophy, Tony Blair's administration is interventionist at heart. Stand by for more, is the message.IonicaSHAREHOLDER ACTIVISM is at a tragically low ebb, if the Ionica annual general meeting is anything to go by.Yesterday's meeting, at the Glaziers Hall next to London Bridge, was attended by just 41 souls and passed off in 48 minutes. And yet just consider what was at stake.Here is a board that has presided over the destruction of shareholder value on a truly heroic scale. Anyone who bought shares at the flotation in July last year will have seen 97 per cent of their investment wiped away.The company did not have any penalty clauses built into the agreement with its main equipment supplier Nortel. Once Mr Mandelson is a safe distance from the current Rover crisis, do not be surprised to hear the DTI announce that it will provide funding to make sure the next Mini is built at Longbridge.As interventions go, this is much preferable to the Government's meddling in the energy market or, worse still, its crass attempts to interfere in the pay arrangements of Camelot's directors.But it does rather set the trend.