It should be an easy decision for a board of directors to make: after the disappearance of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it would be obscene to send a corporate representative to next week’s “Davos in the Desert” event in Riyadh. What’s more, it should not be difficult to say so.

The list of high-profile dropouts is growing but, sad to report, the British financial establishment has not led the way to the exit. Big-name chief executives from the US – the likes of Jamie Dimon from JP Morgan – pulled out on Monday but the Brits followed only on Tuesday, leaving the impression they jumped only once it was less embarrassing, or commercially safer, to do so.

That perhaps also accounts for the reluctance to offer anything resembling a principled explanation for withdrawing. Here’s HSBC’s full statement about why its chief executive will no longer be going to the Future Investment Initiative conference: “John Flint will not attend FII. We have no further comment.” This, remember, is a bank that likes to proclaim it believes in acting with “courageous integrity” and communicating “openly, honestly and transparently, welcoming challenge”.

Bill Winters, the chief executive of Standard Chartered, will also be staying at home. So will David Schwimmer, new boss of the London Stock Exchange Group, an organisation that was in the vanguard of the UK lobbying effort to convert the Saudis to the delights of a London listing for Aramco, their giant oil company. Neither organisation will say a thing.

Nonattendance at the wretched conference is still a snub to Riyadh, it could be argued, and, besides, companies are well advised to leave political statements to politicians. Maybe, but these UK corporate titans still make a miserable sight.

A fair wind behind renewables

Call it a small but significant moment in the energy market: Scottish Power, one of the big six energy firms, is betting its future in power generation entirely on wind. It is selling four gas stations in England, plus two hydro schemes and a pumped storage plant in Scotland, to Drax for £702m.

Scottish Power, which is owned by Spanish group Iberdrola, calls the move a culmination of a 25-year strategy to reduce carbon emissions. But the transaction also serves to highlight the winning economics of wind. The position has been transformed since the days when vast subsidies were required to erect the turbines.

As recently at 2014, offshore generators wanted a guaranteed £150 per megawatt hour (MWh) for their output. In last year’s auction for government subsidies, two big offshore farms came in at £57.50 per MWh, which is lower even than today’s wholesale market price. It’s safe bet that prices will fall again in next year’s auction. Turbines have become bigger, installation costs have fallen and the cables to get the power to shore are more efficient.

The government should draw an obvious lesson from this quiet tale of improvement. Aside from the urgent environmental need to switch to renewables – they must supply 70-80% of the world’s energy by 2050, warned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last week – investing faster in wind makes financial sense for consumers.

It’s true, as everybody knows, that baseload supplies will still be needed for the days when the wind doesn’t blow. But a government that was serious about reducing the cost of energy would spend less time championing price caps on bills and more time on securing lower generation costs. Price caps won’t guarantee lower bills; cheaper generation may.

Package too big for Royal Mail

It was a “huge disappointment” and “a shock” that 70% of shareholders voted against Royal Mail’s remuneration report in July, confessed Orna Ni-Chionna, head of the pay committee. Indeed, she was “embarrassed”.

Full marks for adopting the correct tone in front a Commons select committee but Ni-Chionna’s confession of a “big mistake” covered only Royal Mail’s engagement with investors. It was not an admission that the company should have negotiated harder to cut the golden goodbye payout to former chief executive Moya Greene.

There was – perhaps – nothing that could have done about the obligation to pay £5.8m to Rico Black, Greene’s replacement, to buy him out of his contract at Royal Mail’s GLS business. But Greene’s £914,000 payoff just looked plain excessive – or, as Labour MP Peter Kyle put it, a case of a remuneration committee going “weak at knees” .

Royal Mail will present a formal response to the shareholder vote in the new year. It will be another shock if does not contain news that Ni-Chionna has been replaced. A 70% vote against a report is too big to ignore.