Clayton Hirst: A £20 lynching looms over Byers but Darling is dogged by a £5bn shortfall

How much would you pay to see Stephen Byers in court? £100? £50? How about £20?

For less than a return ticket from London to Bristol, shareholders could see the former Transport Secretary in the dock.

Here's the wheeze. By Wednesday or Thursday the Government, through the state-funded company Network Rail, will have agreed to bail out Railtrack. The deal is conditional on Railtrack Group dropping threatened legal action against Mr Byers, which it will do to get the money for its frazzled shareholders.

But a boisterous group of individual shareholders, going under the name of the Railtrack Private Shareholders' Action Group, which is hell-bent on suing Mr Byers, has spotted a rather neat loophole. They have realised that shareholders – large and small – can accept the Government's money and still pursue Mr Byers in the courts.

So, while Railtrack Group must promise to behave itself, there's nothing stopping the big City investors joining the thousands of smaller shareholders to lynch Mr Byers collectively in the courts.

A £20 membership fee is all the action group wants, to be spent on legal costs. There are no prizes for guessing who the action group has been lobbying recently.

While Mr Byers sweats it out, his replacement, Alistair Darling, has his work cut out to make the railways work.

First, there is a real danger that the not-for-profit Network Rail could be shunted into the sidings by Brussels. Some £300m of the £500m Network Rail is paying for Railtrack comes directly from the Government. This is classed as state aid and therefore requires the nod from the European Commission. Mr Darling was in Strasbourg last week schmoozing with competition commissioner Mario Monti and transport commissioner Loyola de Palacio. But the commissioners' past history on such matters will be enough to turn Mr Darling's grey hair white with worry.

If the application is rejected, then Railtrack's administrator, Alan Bloom, will be required to consider commercial bids. This could lead to a for-profit company buying the railway infrastructure, which isn't going to win Labour any votes.

Of course, if the Government had opted for a true re-nationalisation of the tracks in the first place, the European threat would probably not exist. That, however, would have upset Gordon Brown and his public-borrowing spreadsheets.

Let's suppose that Mr Monti says yes, and Railtrack's shareholders accept the pay-off. Mr Darling will then face his second challenge: making the thing work.

Network Rail will be made up of more than 100 so-called "stakeholders". After the honeymoon period, disagreements over strategy will emerge, with every Tom, Dick and Harry wanting a greater slice of the investment. That's assuming there will be lots of cash to spend.

In the short term, Network Rail has secured £9bn in loans. While this is the size of the Dominican Republic's GDP, it won't last long, being used to finance Railtrack's loans and short-term working capital. Experts believe that at the very least another £5bn is needed to fund the network in the coming years. Where will this come from? No one really knows.

While Mr Darling figures out this conundrum, then just £20 could see the architect of this muddle called to account.

The house of Mr Property

The City doesn't like dynasties. Nor does it take too kindly to personal fiefdoms, which is exactly how British Land appears to some. The FTSE 100 property company is run by John Ritblat, who built up the business from scratch and now owns £9.3bn of assets. But "Mr Property", as he's known in the industry, refuses to split his roles of chairman and chief executive, which goes against modern corporate governance thinking. Even if he did cede his chief executive job, it would probably go to his son Nick, who's a British Land director.

The company has been targeted by Laxey Partners, an activist investor, which is calling for radical changes. On Friday Mr Ritblat sent a circular to shareholders defending the company's strategy prior to next month's AGM. Among the fluff it offers two concessions: the possibility of future share buybacks and the promise of no new share issues.

Critically, however, it maintains the senior management status quo. As such, Mr Property may be underestimating the support Laxey has gained.

clayton.hirst@independent.co.uk