A small but vocal band of critics will get the news that they longed to hear today: Eric Anstee is quitting as chief executive of the ICAEW.

The timing for the institute could hardly have been worse. The council spent Thursday devoting more time than they would have liked to discussing the Durgan affair, a series of calamitous, self-inflicted wounds that has done Moorgate Place's reputation for transparency, good governance and common sense no good at all.

Anstee, we're told, took the decision to retire (at a relatively sprightly 55) in December and told president Ian Morris at the beginning of the year. It's surprising and somewhat impressive that it's been kept under wraps for so long, though I have to say no one I have spoken to since the long-planned merger with CIPFA failed last autumn has expected Anstee to stick around for too much longer.

We're also told that he informed council he would serve three years when he took on the post in 2003, though the announcement at the time made no mention of that. You have to wonder whether he would have applied the notion of a three-term had the merger come off.

So why leave? Is Anstee, a well-regarded deal maker throughout his career in business and practice, frustrated that the deals he tried to do in office (the eyecatcher with CIMA and CIPFA and the relative tiddler with just CIPFA) failed to come off? Probably.

The reason we're given, though, for his decision to stand down is pressure. Anstee once said that as a FTSE 100 FD (which, at Old Mutual, he was) 'to do the job properly you need to be working an 80 or 90- hour week'. The ICAEW role is unlikely to have been much less demanding in the last year.

Judged on that, the decision is understandable. And based on the conversations I've had lately, it's not surprising.

But in terms of how the timing will be perceived, the increased instability it brings to the institute at an already rocky time and, to draw a political parallel, how his legacy will be judged, it's looks awful.