The dastardly Mr. deedes

Carrot-topped hedge fund boss Paul Marshall’s strongly Eurosceptic views are vehemently at odds with his EU-supporting business partner, Ian Wace, but the pair seem to rub along just fine as colleagues. They were certainly in full agreement about Carillion’s prospects. Marshall Wace made over £20m shorting the busted outsourcing firm’s stock last year. Wise move by Theresa May to treat her eager- to- please French counterpart Emmanuel Macron to a snack at Michael Parkinson’s Maidenhead boozer, the Royal Oak, ahead of their visit to Sandhurst yesterday. Lunch inside the officers’ mess might not have cut la moutarde. Sandhurst’s catering is provided by Carillion. Barclays employees worry their nest eggs are at risk after the bank decided to shift responsibility for its pension scheme to its so-called casino arm. Some would feel more comfortable knowing that the bank’s chief executive Jes Staley’s retirement plans were tied to the scheme. But Jes, 61, takes a £400,000 cash payment on top of his £1.2m salary in lieu of pension. What happens to the fund is really neither here nor there to him. Former Bank of England economistturned-Labour MP Rachel Reeves, 38, is supplementing her backbench duties by penning a book on the history of female MPs. Why not? Sensible, wellmannered and economically literate, she can rule herself out of a front-bench career while Jeremy Corbyn’s goons are running the asylum. Does the arrest of the Goldman Sachs president David Solomon’s assistant Nicolas De- Meyer, whom he accuses of stealing £ 1m worth of his wine, sound familiar? Joyti De-Laurey, a secretary at the investment bank’s London office was jailed for seven years in 2004 for pilfering £ 4.2m from employees. She siphoned off £3.4m alone from the none-the-wiser managing director Scott Mead. Theft is rarely excusable, but might Goldman be paying its people too much?

Have you any gossip for our City diary? Email: mrdeedes@dailymail.co.uk