He wasn’t showing it, but Adrian Montague must have had a touch of the pre-match nerves as he led his charges out at Murrayfield last week. It may not have been quite the All-Blacks which Montague’s British Energy first team had to face - but there were several well-prepared opponents to tackle.
Before they reached the car park at the stadium for the AGM on Thursday, they had to sidestep Friends of the Earth Scotland mounting their annual protest against nuclear power.
A couple of hundred feet later, a sharply dressed scrum of staff from
hedge fund Polygon - which has rapidly become the company’s third-largest shareholder with a 5.6% stake - were ready with placards protesting over the deal investors will get from the proposed restructuring.
And inside was the small crowd of private investors who have watched from the sidelines as the value of their stake in the company has dwindled from pounds to pennies.
The pre-match build-up had certainly been tense. A high-profile media campaign by Polygon had even prompted Montague to take the unusual step of putting pen to paper in the letters pages of the FT midweek to set his stall out again before the meeting.
In the event, the meeting itself passed off relatively peacefully.
Montague, a former investment banker, put his case for the defence of the restructuring deal, admitting straight away it was a bitter pill for shareholders to swallow.
But he argued that the company had achieved the best it could for investors at the time. Without the deal being struck there would be no company any more and it was now legally bound to move forward on that deal.
Two Polygon representatives cross-examined him - arguing the deal was being presented to shareholders as a ‘take it or leave it’ proposal.
Although the company wouldn’t want to present it in such terms, its legal obligations under the agreements with creditors mean in effect it is.
As Montague put it: "However enchanting the tune coming from the bush, it is a question of the bird in the hand."
But the game which will decide the future of British Energy is far from over.
Although moves towards the restructuring continue, there are many hurdles ahead - and therein lies Polygon’s hopes of making a significantly larger return on its investment than the profit it has already made on the £5m it paid for its stake.
If the deadline of January 31 for the restructuring is not met, it wants the company to look again at how much shareholders will get from a future deal.
The company argues it cannot give assurances on that - the situation could have changed dramatically by then and it would have to look at what options were then available.
There is also a question mark over whether the Financial Services Authority may alter its rules so that a company has to get shareholder approval before delisting its existing shares - another issue Polygon believes might give shareholders an opportunity to get a better deal.
The company has made its position on that clear: if changes to the rules threatened a restructuring, the company would have to consider delisting the shares before the changes came in.
"To fail to do so could imperil the existing restructuring and might expose the company to further claims from its creditors," said Montague.
So just what does the proposed deal mean for shareholders? Major creditors and the bondholders of the company have agreed to waive £1.3bn worth of claims against the company in exchange for £425m of new bonds and at least 97.5% of shares in the restructured group.
The existing shareholders will be left with just 2.5% of the company, with warrants to subscribe for a further 5%.
The company stresses that at the time the agreement was reached electricity prices on the wholesale market were still very low - the main factor which first set in motion British Energy’s financial woes.
Things have changed since then: the price the company gets for its electricity has risen dramatically and is expected to remain relatively high for the foreseeable future.
"British Energy is in a significantly better position than it was. Wholesale prices have risen by 50% over the past year or so and we forecast they still have some way to go," said Matt Williamson of energy consultants EIC.
"They are likely to continue rising, with gas prices high and concerns over generation capacity in the UK as some older power stations are decommissioned."
With the picture looking decidedly brighter for the generator than it was 10 months ago, Polygon believes shareholders are getting a raw deal.
The company argues that the fact the shareholders are getting anything at all - something some creditors fiercely opposed at the time - was only because the company fought their corner. And if the agreement hadn’t been reached the company would have gone into administration and shareholders would be left with nothing at all.
"A year or so ago electricity prices were so low it is difficult to see what else the company could have done to avoid going under," said Nigel Hawkins, a former Williams de Broe analyst and now an independent energy commentator.
"Any change to the deal now would be resisted by the bondholders, who are quite happy with what they’ve got, and I don’t think the government would want to go back on what has been agreed."
The next few months are crucial. Key is that the restructuring plan is approved by the European Commission under state aid rules and it is expected to announce its decision in the autumn, which is expected to be favourable.
The UK government also needs to be satisfied the company has a viable future without needing additional financing.
With British Energy generating a fifth of the UK’s electricity, it is very much in the government’s interests that the restructuring goes ahead as planned. Although there is no question that the plants would be shut down if the company went under, how and by whom they would be run post-British Energy is a headache that ministers would want to avoid at all costs.
Even after government and EU approval the company still needs court blessing for the restructuring and then has to successfully list the new shares and bonds - all before January 31.
For the average private investor who bought a couple of hundred shares when British Energy was privatised it all must be rather bemusing.
Five years ago shares were trading comfortably at the £7 mark. Even three years ago, and as wholesale electricity prices continued to fall, they held their own above £3.
At the beginning of this year they were just 4.5p - a one-time blue-chip company reduced to a penny share. The shares have since risen strongly on the back of rising electricity prices and talk that the restructuring deal could be renegotiated.
But without a renegotiation, analysts believe the shares are worth more like 8p, rather than the 18.5p they were trading at on Friday.
"The price of the shares just doesn’t reflect the value of the company to shareholders. The fact that the bonds are trading much higher than their face value is largely irrelevant to ordinary investors," said one.
What the future will hold for a new look British Energy, provided the restructuring goes ahead, is uncertain. Aside from the financial issues, there is much work to be done on the operational front. The company’s stations need significant investment to avoid the unplanned shutdowns that also contributed to its financial crisis.
Its ability to benefit from higher electricity prices is dependent on its being able to maintain output - only two weeks ago it reduced its output forecast for the current year because work needs doing at two of its sites.
And it is still unclear whether nuclear power has any long-term future.
All UK stations are due to reach the end of their normal working lives over the next 30 years, with the first of its two Scottish stations, Hunterston, being the first to reach that point in 2011.
Before its dramatic fall from grace, British Energy had ambitiously proposed a £10bn nuclear new-build programme, building stations alongside its existing sites.
Although the government’s energy white paper did not support any new-build nuclear stations, many commentators believe that the ambitious long-term targets for emissions reductions won’t be achieved unless nuclear power is included as part of the energy mix.
"I think the picture looks better for nuclear than for some time. Gas prices have shot up recently, and unless oil prices - which gas prices tend to follow - come down they will remain high," said Hawkins. "Our gas imports will also go up in the years ahead and a lot of that will have to come from Russia and the Middle East, which are not seen as particularly stable.
"There has been growing talk that against all that, and the climate change issue, the door should not be closed on nuclear."
The pro-nuclear lobby was heartened last month when Tony Blair described climate change as the single biggest long-term problem facing the country when he appeared before the chairmen of select committees and commented: "I have fought long and hard, both within my party and outside, to make sure that the nuclear option is not closed off."
Whether British Energy will be in any position to play a role if nuclear power is given a new lease of life remains to be seen.
