The dastardly Mr Deedes

Lloyd’s of London chairman Bruce Carnegie Brown yesterday stood down as chair of price comparison site Moneysupermarket, as its share price swelled on strong results. Congenial fellow, Bruce, though I’m advised an iron fist lurks inside that velvet mitt. He’s among the directors of santander who recently blocked the exUBs high flyer Andrea Orcel from becoming chief executive. Apparently there was a suspicion signor Orcel’s shoes were a little too well-shined. Barclays chief Jes Staley has recruited Fater Belbachir to be his new head of global trading, an otherwise unremarkable hire other than that he’s been poached from Jes’s former employer JP Morgan. Since arriving at Barclays in 2015, Staley has nabbed several senior staff from there, including head of investment banking, Tim Throsby. JP boss Jamie Dimon reportedly telephoned Staley office to call a truce. Let us hope hostilities have resumed. Goldman sachs’s lofty European boss Richard Gnodde agreed to meet last year with banker- hating shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, who promised to lay on ‘tea and Rich Tea biscuits’ for his guest. Did the meeting happen? sighs Gnodde: ‘It did. But I never saw any biscuits.’ Media mogul Darren Throop, Canadaborn founder of Peppa Pig creator Entertainment One, recently pocketed £5.8m from selling shares in the firm. Nattily-attired Throop is flashy. I’m told he keeps a raffish bolthole in Costa Rica. A pal says: ‘Darren’s main motivation in life was to escape the Canadian winter.’ Grinning ex-Barclay boss Bob Diamond’s high-minded daughter Nell informs the Wall street Journal she wears a hair bow to her most important business meetings. she observes: ‘We are at a place in fashion where we are not policing women in the same way. Bows represent this freedom to adorn ourselves the way we want to adorn ourselves.’ sage Ms Diamond earns her crust selling soft furnishings inspired by luxury hotels she visited as a child. Finally, this column is my last as ‘dastardly’. From next week, I will appear elsewhere in the newspaper, reporting from Westminster. Many thanks for your support and tolerance these past three years.