The dastardly Mr Deedes
Shareholder documents pertaining to Clydesdale bank’s takeover of Virgin Money warn that the new combined group ‘will be exposed to the risk that others associated with the “Virgin” brand, including Sir Richard Branson and his family, may bring the brand into disrepute.’ The are no skeletons rattling around in Saint Beardie’s cupboard, surely? Spotted: Mark Carney in Swiss Cottage’s Singapore Garden Thai takeaway on Tuesday ‘working hard, studying some papers while he waited for his quarter portion of a crispy duck’. Meal for one, Governor? Direct Line boss Paul Geddes’s decision to step down after ten years leaves him plenty of time for music practice. Geddes, 49, plays fiddle for the Westminster Philharmonic Orchestra. Perhaps it’s also time to pension off those tiresome adverts, featuring Hollywood star Harvey Keitel, as Winston Wolfe from Pulp Fiction, which have surely delighted us long enough. JP Morgan chieftain Jamie Dimon says that when he was fired from Citi in 1998, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos invited him to be his company president. Says Dimon: ‘It was just a bridge too far for me to move my whole family to Seattle at that age, at that time.’ Two of American business’s biggest egos working alongside each other. What could possibly have gone wrong? It’s International Beer Day tomorrow, a tiresome marketing gimmick designed to get us all sozzled, masquerading as a celebration of brewers and suppliers. This fol- lows the screaming success of Monday’s National Orgasm Day, and the more dour National Yorkshire Day yesterday, to look forward to. The late satirist Auberon Waugh once proposed a ‘Smack a Child Day’ but failed to garner the requisite support. Finally, my thanks to reader Nigel Moore for pointing out Fever-Tree shares have not nearly trebled since their 2014 stock market flotation as I said last week, but have in fact rocketed nearly 30 times their original value. Carelessness on my part, which I’m blaming squarely on recently enforced midsummer abstinence, easily remedied should the Fever-Tree chaps fancy sending over a bottle of aromatic tonic or two.