IN the late 1980s I was lucky enough to work on the commercial property newspaper Estates Times. And I do mean lucky.

The paper wasn't a dry read concerned with chronicling the minutiae of shopping centre rental incomes in Bromley or Birmingham, but rather a heady mix of the unimaginable wealth, megalomania, daring, foolhardiness and damn sexinesss that characterised the property boom of the 1980s.

And what players! Developers such as Godfrey Bradman, so financially sophisticated he must have had two brains; the architecturally brilliant Stuart Lipton; the buccaneering boss of Helical Bar, Michael Slade, who revelled in the title of a merchant developer, if you please, casting himself in a piratical mould, cutlass a-whirling, chopping down planners and timid bankers alike. And towering above them all was the urbane head of British Land, John Ritblat.

Ritblat entered the property industry in the early 1950s, attracted by the potential of post-Second World War London. Then, many swanky streets, such as Bond Street, looked like old hags with missing teeth as austerity and restrictive building licences had seen to it that bomb sites weren't filled in.

In the past 50 years, Ritblat has developed and redeveloped London and beyond. Now, aged 66, he sits astride British Land, one of the country's biggest property groups, as both chairman and chief executive. He brings new meaning to the word tycoon. And yet all could be about to change.

A corporate raider has boarded Ritblat's company, taking a small shareholding but making a big noise. Laxey Partners describes itself as an active investor. Essentially, it makes money by agitating for change in companies in which it takes a stake. It's riled by the way Ritblat supposedly runs a public company as if it were a family business. But what sends Laxey really bonkers is British Land's shares trading at a discount to the combined value of all the property it owns.

In an attempt to push up the share price, Laxey is agitating for change. The annual meeting next month is where it will all come to a head. Ritblat should sell tickets.

So many companies appear hampered by having to wonder how every small action will impact on their shareholders that they dare not manage any more. Of course, companies have to remember whose money it is they're monkeying around with, but they should be allowed to do it their way. And if shareholders don't like it then they shouldn't invest in that company.

Ritblat is autocratic in his way of management, but what is so bad about pre-tax profits of £171m, a dividend of 12.4p, giving jobs to more than 600 people and outperforming the property sector by 15 per cent in the last two years? There are plenty of corporate basket cases out there. Laxey should pick a fight with them and leave Ritblat alone.

* Ian Reeve is the BBC's Northern Business and Industry Correspondent