The share prices of prospective marriage partners JS Corp and Stone might have taken a pasting this week as the Dow took a dive on fears of lower corporate earnings, but one man who will not be hanging around once Michael Smurfit and Roger Stone exchange their corporate marriage vows is Stone's chief financial officer, Randolph Read.

Whether Mr Read saw certain writing on the wall is not immediately clear, but he has no intention of staying on once the merger is completed later this year. Now it seems, Mr Read has lined up with a dissident shareholder group to try and overturn the board of ailing Australian mining group, BHP a development which could see the Stone financial man lock horns with one Don Argus.

Customers of National Irish Bank will no doubt be aware of Mr Argus. As chairman of NIB-parent National Australia Bank, Mr Argus bemoaned the way his bank had apparently been "singled out" for investigation about interest-loading and selling of CMI policies.

Mr Argus, who gave the impression of believing that NIB was somehow a victim of an Irish media plot, seemed to ignore the fact that no Irish other bank had been discovered carrying out NIB's interesting practices.

Mr Argus is combative, and the Aussie media

is gearing up for what could be an intriguing battle between Mr Read and disgruntled BHP investor Derek Turner on one side and Mr Argus and the BHP board on the other. Mr Turner was quite blunt about Don Argus: "We don't want a banker/accountant at the helm of BHP. We want somebody with the capacity to be a change merchant."