Is it Goodbye to Big Ego Leaders?

He'd said he was going to go at the end of June, and as good as his word, Sir Alan Sugar's given over the day-to-day running of Amstrad to plain Alun Webber, the managing director.

The Hackney-born entrepreneur founded Amstrad at 21 and last year sold the set-top box business to BSkyB for £125m, netting £34.5m and bringing his personal fortune to an estimated £830m.

Sugar will concentrate on other interests including computer business Viglen, Jersey-based investment vehicle Amshold, and his lucrative (well, in better times) property holding, Amsprop, whose portfolio includes the old IBM building on London's South Bank and which is apparently run by Sugar's son, Daniel. There's also the little indulgence that is Amsair, a private jet company that must be smarting from high fuel prices, if not declining custom from its high-net worth client base.

But Sugar will always have his TV appearances to fall back on and will be back for another round of firings in next year's Apprentice.

For John Naughton, it's probably good riddance. He classes Sugar among the corporate world's "vulgar, undisciplined, ego-maniacal brutes" who allow their businesses to become vehicles for their "infantile personalities".

Does Sugar deserve such a drubbing? He may not be the most subtle boss on the block, but he represents a charismatic and no-nonsense entrepreneurial type that's quickly going the way of the Dodo.

Two of Amstrad's four senior managers have worked with Sugar for a collective 43 years -- how bad can he be? And, cynicism notwithstanding, it's unusual for a tyrant to attribute his company's success to its "talented and loyal team".

Egotistical? Possibly. Brash? Certainly. But after Sugar, there's only Branson to claim the role of big business personality. Doesn't business need a few larger-than-life characters -- or are they part of a model that's no longer sustainable?