The dastardly Mr Deedles

Bankers in Societe generale’s fixed income division in london are moping. Their bonus pool was down by 5pc this year, despite the department enjoying healthy revenues. Junior bankers are particularly miffed, after seeing their bonus shrivel by as much 40pc from last year. The poor dears. Still, it could be worse. They could work at dead dog deutsche Bank. Only one in ten of its london staff got anything at all.

Royal Bank of Scotland chairman Sir Howard Davies, 66, moans he’s suffering from a condition he’s called ‘fitbitus saunarenis’. It’s a wrist rash caused by wearing his Fitbit – a wrist device which tracks your exercise – in the sauna. He says: ‘In America, I’d sue.’ I’m sure he would. But is this really a matter to occupy his mind the week after RBS reports £7bn losses?

Publishing giant Penguin Random House has paid a reputed £52m for Barack Obama’s memoirs. The president’s first memoir, dreams from My Father, written when he was a Chicago lawyer, became a global hit after it was presciently acquired by British publisher Canongate in 2004. Thanks to them, vain phony Obama still pockets £350,000 a year in royalties.

Ludicrously monickered rap crooner Will. I. Am (real name William James Adams) is at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, showing his new Artificial Intelligence device AneedA to anyone who’s bothered. The gadget, a personal assistant similar to Apple’s Siri, is a collaboration with Dutch telecoms firm Veon. They weren’t the peculiar bachelor’s first port of call. I’m told Britain’s EE were among those originally approached who gave it a wide swerve.

PS – champagne corks are popping for a certain divisive big shot after he announced another strong set of results recently. now in the autumn of his career, his rise up the corporate ladder is all the more impressive since, I’m reliably informed, he was sacked from an early managerial posting for fiddling his expenses.