David Lyon the chief executive plans to retire at 60 next June

David Lyon, the chief executive, plans to retire at 60 next June. A successor from outside was due to be in place by the end of December, but no appointment is now expected until the new year.On top of that, Rexam is also on the look-out for a new non-executive chairman. Mr Woodhouse was appointed in 1993, but as a stop-gap only, after Norman Ireland left to rejoin and run the BTR conglomerate.A natural successor appeared to have been lined up when Lord Sheppard, head of the Grand Metropolitan food and drinks group, joined the board two years ago, but he left in March amid speculation that such a high- profile chairman with a reputation for deal-making would unsettle an incoming chief executive.Picking a management duo with clear ideas about strategy and direction is the natural way out of the dilemma. But the difficulty in finding such a team was highlighted last week when Brian Smith, new stopgap chairman at Cable & Wireless, said it would take at least a year to replace its top two, Lord Young and James Ross, who left the telecoms group on Tuesday after an acrimonious boardroom bust-up.As with C&W, doubts about Rexam's strategy are likely to persist while this power vacuum remains Analysts reckon the company is too broadly spread. Although printing and packaging still account for more than half of sales, recent expansion of the coated products business, most notably 1993's pounds 305m acquisition of the US speciality papers company SCI, has failed to reduce exposure to huge swings in stock at various stages of the paper cycle. Indeed, far from providing higher margins and greater earnings visibility, it is the mainly US-based coated products division that is suffering most from the current bout of destocking.Analysts also continue to question how building products and engineering - accounting for almost a quarter of group sales - fit into a company whose basic business is to wrap things up.Rexam is addressing the concerns, but only up to a point.

Plans to sell the Australian engineering arm are at an advanced stage, but the group insists it is not looking for someone to take its PVC windows and MiTek metal connecting plates operations off its hands.But perhaps the biggest criticism levelled by investors is directed at Rexam's top-down, global approach in an industry where being close to customers in niche markets is everything."Rexam has gone for the grand strategy," says one analyst, "but has forgotten it is in more of a people business than it imagines. Apart from mass-produced items like tin cans and aerosols, packaging is a high-service business."Two surprise profit warnings in three months support this view of a rather monolithic management structure where information filters up only slowly through various divisional layers to the boardroom. Rexam's sheer size may also explain why it passed up several recent acquisition opportunities to add to its pharmaceutical packaging interests, one of the fastest-growing and highest-margin areas of the industry.Such concerns are mere quibbles, though, against the unresolved management issue and uncertainty about how long de-stocking will continue. Assuming the latter ends sooner rather than later, pre-profits next year could hit BZW's top-of-the range pounds 225m, implying a pros-pective price-earnings ratio under 11. That may look attractive, but until future strategy is clarified, the shares should be given a wide berth..

IN THE 1980s investors went crazy for specialist retailers. Shares in such companies as Sock Shop, The Body Shop, Laura Ashley and the optician Miller & Santhouse were on sky- high ratings. Those days are long gone, and even reborn sector favourites like Next are comparatively modestly rated. But investors' enthusiasm for niche retailers is not illogical - when a format is working, the growth potential can be phenomenal. Just look at the proliferation of such international retail concepts as Benetton and Toys'R'Us. Two recently floated UK retail specialists which should go a long way are the sports goods retailer JJB Sports, at 505p, and Oasis, at 224p, a chain selling womenswear for the 18-35s.

Both are showing dramatic growth, with formats which are clearly working. Healthy cash generation offers the potential to grow these businesses to several times their present size without further equity funding. Long-term icing on the cake comes from fledgling international operations. The success of JJB Sports is all the more remarkable in that the market leader, Olympus, part of the Sears empire, is not doing well and may be up for sale. The impression is that JJB is a much more efficient retailer.

It specialises almost exclusively in branded goods from such market leaders as Nike, Adidas and Umbro Prices are affordable to keep stock moving fast. The sales breakdown with the interim figures was clothing 33 per cent, replica kit 20 per cent, footwear 39 per cent, and equipment (tennis racquets, footballs and the like) 8 per cent.Replica kit is a particular star on attractive margins. Football clubs change their strip with increasing regularity, stimulating burgeoning sales.Founded by a former Blackburn Rovers player, David Whelan, JJB has increased its number of stores from 63 in 1991 to 145 currently. Average store size has grown as well, which has boosted sales from pounds 20m to an expected pounds 90m- plus this year, while pretax profits have grown from pounds 2.5m to last year's pounds 7.6m.