The dastardly Mr Deedes
The resignation of Pensions Regulator boss Lesley Titcomb, who’s stepping down from her £225,000-a-year role after just four years, marks yet another scalp for prickly work and pensions committee chairman Frank Field. Following the recent Carillion collapse, Field, 75, accused the bubbly copper’s daughter, 56, of being woefully under-prepared for her committee appearance, remarking dismissively: ‘ If we’d bumped into you at a bus stop we would expect you to have been better informed.’
Enjoying life back in the private sector, Lloyds Bank recently hosted a spa evening for journalists at the Dorchester Hotel. Strictly a ladies-only affair, sadly, which will have disappointed the bank’s frisky chief, Antonio Horta-Osorio, 54, something of a pampering enthusiast. The old rake splurged £550 on treatments at Singapore’s Mandarin Oriental hotel while enjoying his notorious liaison dangereuse with sexy academic Wendy Piatt.
New York-based Renaissance Technologies boss James Simons is, for the second year running, the world’s highest earning hedge funder, raking in over £1.2bn last year, which works out at £3.4m a day. A reclusive, professor-like figure, bearded Simons, 80, is something of an enigma within the hedge fund community where he’s known as Elvis. Why so? ‘Because he’s the king and you always know when he’s left the building.’
Increasingly social media-obsessed Treasury secretary Liz Truss, 42, excitedly informed Twitter this week she was off to a performance of Chess, the West End musical set partly in Bangkok. Later, she shared pictures of her pretheatre Thai supper, captioned: ‘Obvs had to have a themed dinner beforehand.’ La Truss is a peculiar creature, isn’t she?
Barclays boss Jes Staley was in the North East yesterday to launch the bank’s new £500m fund for small businesses. The likeable Bostonian, 61, swung by Barclays’ call centre in Sunderland before paying a visit to Thornton Brothers, a familyrun firm which refurbishes buses. Do we suspect £3.9m-a-year Jes is still being punished for his involvement in the recent whistleblower scandal?