Vittorio Colao, who quit as chief executive of Italy’s RCS Mediagroup on Thursday, is understood recently to have met Lord MacLaurin, Vodafone’s outgoing chairman. Asked by The Times whether he would consider the top job at Vodafone should it become free, he said: “Of course I will think of every national and international post at this point.”

Signor Colao, who resigned as head of Vodafone’s Southern European, Middle East and Africa region in June 2004, confirmed yesterday that he “kept open all contacts with Vodafone”. It was not clear what his meeting with Lord MacLaurin was about.

The comments from Signor Colao came as Legal & General Investment Management, which holds a 3.67 per cent stake in Vodafone, and Standard Life condemned the mobile group’s performance under Mr Sarin ahead of today’s annual general meeting. L&G called on Sir John Bond, the veteran banker who will take over as Vodafone’s chairman today, to assess all the senior executives and make any necessary changes.

L&G said it would not join the expected rebellion at the annual meeting — at which institutions holding 10 per cent of Vodafone’s shares are tipped to vote against Mr Sarin’s re-election — because it would be too disruptive for Vodafone to switch its chief executive and chairman simultaneously. But the shareholder said it was “clear that the company has not performed well either in operational or share-price terms over the last couple of years”.

Separately, Standard Life Investments, which holds just over 1 per cent of the group, complained that the City had “lost confidence in Sarin’s judgment as a leader of Vodafone”.

The criticism comes only days after another shareholder, Morley Fund Management, declared its intention to vote against Mr Sarin’s re-election. Hermes, which holds 1.1 per cent of Vodafone’s shares, is also expected to try to block the chief executive’s reappointment.

Vodafone yesterday released key trading figures showing that it had attracted 4.5 million new customers in the three months to June 30. The figures sent Vodafone’s shares up 4p to 115.25p, but they made little impact effect on critics, who continued to fret about fierce competition, slowing growth in the group’s core European markets, its longer-term poor share-price performance and Mr Sarin’s ability to handle these problems.

In recent months, Mr Sarin has instigated a series of changes aimed at providing a boost to the share price. These have included the group’s exit from Japan and a £9 billion sweetener for investors. Critics say these changes have come too late and are a hurried reaction to criticism.

David Cumming, head of UK equities at Standard Life Investments, said yesterday: “What has happened over the last three years in terms of his [Mr Sarin’s] tenure has not been beneficial to the share price and that is the bottom line.”

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