The dastardly Mr Deedes
Advertiser WPP’s chairman Roberto Quarta may well have been reaching for something particularly potent from the back of the drinks cabinet by close of play last night. As well as dealing with misconduct allegations against Sir Martin Sorrell, he had to contend with Olivier Bohuon’s departure from orthopaedic giant Smith & Nephew, where Quarta, 68, is also chairman. As Lady Bracknell would doubtless have sniffed, to lose one chief executive in a day could be considered unfortunate. Potentially losing two, well, that looks careless.
Re Sorrell, while the allegations against him remain unknown, this isn’t the first tight spot the compact advertising mogul’s found himself in this year. Happily married Sir Martin, 73, has already apologised for WPP’s support of the Presidents Club dinner, an unedifying evening where all-male attendees groped scantily-clad hostesses.
Royal Bank of Scotland is to sublet part of its North American headquarters in Connecticut to Bank of America. Described as Fred Goodwin’s last act of folly, the £338m glass palace’s construction went £68m over budget as the bank teetered on collapse. ‘Nooo expense spared,’ went up the Goodwin cry, that most unsettling of phrases deployed by tinpot dictators. The Bank of England hosts a lecture in a fortnight’s time by singer Billy Bragg, 60, the tiresome left-wing activist. Last year, it welcomed a talk by transvestite potter Grayson Perry, 58. Who’s behind these unlikely invitations to Threadneedle
Street? The Bank’s freewheeling chief economist Andy Haldane, 50, deserves a nugget of blame, I am advised.
BBC business reporter Simon Jack cajoled Business Secretary Greg Clark into an interview while reporting live from Vauxhall’s Luton plant, where the car maker pledged to safeguard 1,400 jobs. Bounding over like a golden retriever, Clark claimed victory for his industrial strategy which, he said, ‘is commanding a lot respect in the automotive sector and other industries’. Others are less kind. One critic described the report as ‘10,000 pages of waffle’.