The dastardly Mr Deedes
HSBC’s soon-to-be departing boss Stuart Gulliver is the subject of intriguing gossip at the Tory conference. A senior political lobbyist claims a headhunter asked him for recommendations for a speechwriter for Gulliver, promising a ‘managing director’ level salary. An HSBC spokesman says she isn’t aware of any such appointment, though I wonder if strutty little Gulliver, 58, has an eye fixed upon his legacy. Relations between he and new chairman Mark Tucker, who’s currently scouting for his successor, are said to be distinctly cool.
Re HSBC, outgoing chairman Douglas Flint’s farewell speech at Spencer House last week praised the bank’s resilience to the various financial catastrophes during his 22-year career, from 1997’s East Asian debt crisis to the global meltdown in 2008. Chunters a guest: ‘Strangely, no mention of other crises to have befallen HSBC in that period – the money-laundering scandal, the Swiss tax-avoidance storm, Libor rigging…’
Invoke Capital boss Mike Lynch has named each room of the tech fund’s new Pall Mall offices after fictional spies. Bald-as-a-coot Lynch, 52, is something of an espionage nut. Rooms at the Cambridge offices of his software firm Autonomy, which he sold to Hewlett Packard in 2011 for £11bn, were named after James Bond villains. He also installed a tank of needle-toothed piranhas in the foyer.
Bankers in Goldman Sachs’ New York offices were last week treated to a lunch made by Daniel Boulud, 62, the double Michelin-starred French chef who charges diners £200 a head to eat at his nearby restaurant. Another ruse by the bank to keep workers from leaving the building? Goldman are so determined to squeeze the hours out of its London staff, their offices have an in-house dry cleaner.
Chasing up the Monarch Airlines collapse proved a nightmare for journalists when news of its impending doom first percolated around the City. The airline’s media handlers were Bell Pottinger, the PR firm which itself had just gone belly-up following its involvement in a political scandal in South Africa.
Have you any gossip for our City diary? Email: mrdeedes@dailymail.co.uk