When it was launched by the coalition government in 2012, the Green Investment Bank seemed to be George Osborne’s sop to the Liberal Democrats and their heretical ideas about industrial strategies.

A state-funded bank that isn’t a bank – GIB is an investor in hard-to-finance green projects – didn’t sound like an adventure that would carry the long-term support of the former chancellor when he was straining to show fiscal discipline. Sure enough, Osborne started talking almost immediately about the need for GIB to stand on its own feet and attract private capital.

What’s wrong with that, it might be argued. GIB is supposed to invest only in commercially viable projects and, what’s more, seems to have stuck to its brief. There have been no spectacular blow-ups in a portfolio than runs from windfarms to street-lighting systems. While actual profits are tiny, as one would expect at a young institution investing in long-term assets, projected returns from £2.7bn of investments are pencilled in to be a tidy 10%. Why wouldn’t the private sector wish to put more capital behind GIB and its 140 staff in London and Edinburgh?

That, at least, was the thinking and, by stealth, the government convinced itself that only a sale of a majority stake in GIB (or the whole lot) would do. But, don’t worry, the government added in a policy paper last March, the other objectives would be value for money for the public purse and an insistence that the new owner should honour GIB’s green purposes. The result is that, by the end of this month, a sale of GIB to Australian bank Macquarie is likely to be announced.

Green Investment Bank sale is 'deeply troubling', say Scottish ministers Read more

We should be alarmed. That is not only because of weekend stories about Macquarie lining up buyers for GIB projects in an “asset stripping” exercise. Investments do not have to be held for infinity, of course, and GIB itself is sometimes a seller. But the real worry here is subtler and more serious: can Macquarie be made to recycle the proceeds of any disposals into GIB-style renewable infrastructure in the UK?

The short answer is: no. After a sale, the government is virtually powerless. “It is not open to the government to impose binding conditions on the future GIB requiring it to act in a particular way,” conceded the March paper. Instead, the government created a “special share” arrangement, and a panel of five experts to police it, to ensure that any investments meet the renewable criteria.

But what if Macquarie thinks GIB is worth more dead than alive? What if it pays £2bn for GIB, liquidates most of the assets at a handsome profit and then decides the capital is better deployed elsewhere?

The government seems to be grossly naive about this possibility. The March paper spoke cheerfully about how potential investors were interested in GIB because of its green specialism and declared: “It would make no sense to buy the company only to move it away from this focus.” Wake up. It would make perfect sense if a new owner could flip the assets for a large profit and then enjoy a completely free hand on how to spend the proceeds.

Macquarie, remember, is a vast financial conglomerate. Yes, it is happy to bore on about how many renewable energy projects it has backed but, in the end, the money flows to where its managers think the best returns will be made. That may not be green projects, or even the UK. It could prefer to pay its shareholders a special dividend. GIB could be lost within the greater Macquarie empire.

Theresa May should look at this privatisation afresh. She tells us she wants the UK to have an industrial policy but now she’s selling an institution that, against the odds and from scratch, has done a good job of attracting capital to UK infrastructure on commercial lines. The government says it “wants and expects GIB to continue to invest in green sectors following a sale” but, in the absence of clauses that are binding on Macquarie, that expectation is really just a hope that the Aussies will play nice.

Smart financial buyer runs rings around gullible government. It’s an old story, and likely to be repeated unless May intervenes at the 11th hour. She should call the whole thing off, or find a better buyer.

Bovis stonewalls over boss’s departure

David Ritchie, chief executive of Bovis Homes, has told the board he plans to leave. You can’t blame him. He’s spent 18 years at the Kent-based housebuilder and he’s only 47, which leaves plenty of time to try something else.

Hold on, though, what’s this? “The contractual obligations are being met,” says a Bovis spokesman, using the usual shorthand for a pay-off. Why does Ritchie deserve a pay-off, though? If he has chosen to leave, which is what the announcement said, there should no obligation to pay him beyond his last day in the office, which is the last day of next month.

But perhaps Ritchie has “chosen” to leave because the board thought it needs a new chief executive in the wake of the profits warning a fortnight ago. That would be more of an ousting, in which case Ritchie might indeed be contractually entitled to a sum of up to a year’s salary, or £550,000.

So which is it? Did he jump or was he pushed? The deliberate ambiguity is silly, as is the brush-off that all will be revealed in the next annual report. It should not be hard to give shareholders a straight answer on the day that boss says he’s off.