Ball not going to ITV

Tony Ball has walked away from ITV.

The former Sky boss will not become chief executive of the commercial broadcaster, I have learned.

He had set a deadline of this weekend to agree terms and the two sides failed to sort out everything.

There were two stumbling blocks: some non-financial elements of the contract and the board's suggestions of candidates to replace as chairman Michael Grade, whom Ball regarded as unsuitable.

Update 1324: I am told that it was the ITV board's nominations committee which last night met and decided to cease negotiations with Tony Ball.

The final straw, I am told, was Ball's opposition to their leading candidate to be the new chairman of ITV and his misgivings on other candidates.

The two sides were almost there on his pay package. There were a few outstanding items to be resolved, such as what he would be paid in the event of his contract being terminated.

So it's back to the drawing board for ITV to find a new chief executive - which won't be easy with its part of the commercial television industry in such dire straits.

Update 1524: So how will a new chief executive be appointed?

Well, the plan has changed. What is now likely to happen, perhaps as soon as next week, is that a new non-executive chairman will be appointed (Michael Grade is currently executive chairman - so in effect both chairman and chief executive).

And the lucky new chairman will be given the questionable privilege of then overseeing the re-started process of finding a chief executive who can command the confidence of the TV company's owners.

The potential candidate for chairman who Tony Ball didn't want is Sir Crispin Davis. He is standing down as chief executive of the publishing giant, Reed Elsevier.

Many will understand why ITV's board felt it inappropriate that a chief executive should have a veto on who should have the role of holding the very same chief executive to account.

Another name on the list of candidates was Sir Michael Bishop, the recently retired founder of BMI and a former chairman of Channel 4.

There are two other potential candidates.

ITV may be looking at Helen Alexander, former chief executive of the Economist and currently president of the CBI, as a potential chairman.

She told me in a recent interview that these days she is much more interested in being a chairman than a chief executive.

Update 2012: Here's a bit more on the messy failure of ITV to appoint Tony Ball as its chief executive, in spite of weeks of negotiation.

There were two main stumbling blocks. One was that Ball was advised by his lawyer that the clause in the proposed contract relating to early departure left him vulnerable to receiving little reward for any uplift he had achieved in the value of ITV.

Apparently the so-called good leaver clause proposed by ITV was unusual in giving wider discretion than normal to the company to distribute zilch to Ball if he left before the expiry of his proposed five-year deal.

But Ball's appointment was killed when he manifested uneasiness about the board's late disclosure to him - after he had been given a list of other candidates just on Wednesday by the ITV non-exec Sir James Crosby - that it wanted to appoint Crispin Davis as chairman.

Ball was not - I am told - trying to dictate who should be chairman. However he was hoping the chairman would have a financial background, because of the scale of the reconstruction of the business he wanted to carry out.

He was - somewhat unfashionably - hoping to have a banker as chairman, rather than an electronic publisher like Davies.

Tonight Ball said this in a statement:

"Earlier this week...the ITV board imposed an ultimatum over the appointment of a new non-executive chairman. Whilst I was ready to participate in a debate about the company's next chairman, the board decided it no longer wished to proceed and my candidacy - initiated with the support of several large shareholders - was terminated."

Anyway, although ITV terminated the talks, Ball too was assuming it was all over - largely because of the impasse over the termination clause.

He believes some on the board never really wanted him, but were going through the motions of negotiating because a number of big shareholders backed his appointment.