The dastardly Mr Deeds

Informa chief Lord (Stephen) Carter excitedly announces plans for a £3.8bn takeover of rivals uBM to create the world’s largest business events organiser. Good to see the former ofcom boss, 53, has finally got his mojo back after a bruising period working in Downing Street for Gordon Brown. the job was a living hell largely due to Brown’s chief well-poisoner, Damian McBride, who took umbrage at Carter’s portentous ‘chief of strategy and principal adviser to the Prime Minister’ title, £ 137,000 salary, elaborate business cards and personalised ergonomic chair. Burberry are in urgent need of a new creative director to replace Christopher Bailey, 46, following its disappointing slump in sales. Worth a flutter, I’m told, is oafish-looking west Londoner Kim Jones, 38, who’s now readily available after standing down from Louis Vuitton yesterday and a cheaper hire than current favourite, exCeline creative Phoebe Philo, 45. Plus he keeps a pungent milieu, which includes Kate Moss, David Beckham and Vogue editor Edward Enninful, who’ll be quietly championing his cause. Well-nourished Silicon Valley mogul Reid Hoffman, who sold social media site LinkedIn to Microsoft in 2016 for £18bn, met the Duke of york this week at Buckingham Palace. What does a business whizz like Hoffman, 50, stand to gain from conversing with testy Andrew, 57, by all accounts a bear of very little brain? Absolutely nothing one suspects, but such encounters make a good yarn for the folks back home. ‘At Carillion, we aspire to engage with society and take responsibility for our actions.’ Who was this upstanding-sounding fellow speaking to Cape Town’s This Life magazine in 2016? Why, Carillion’s publicity-friendly chairman Philip Green. He’ll get plenty of opportunities to do both in coming months! Legendary uS oil investor t Boone Pickens remains unmoved by the cryptocurrency fad. He deadpans: ‘At 89, anything with the word ‘crypt’ in it is a real turn- off for me.’