The dastardly Mr Deedes
The arrest of scandal-ridden HSBC’s foreign exchange chief Mark Johnson last week is a blow for the bank’s chairman, Douglas Flint. The dour Glaswegian, 61, would have preferred to pass on a relatively empty in-tray to his successor before his departure next year. Who’ll it be? The current favourite, bouffant-haired Henri De Castries, 61, the thrusting Parisian Count who was recently in charge at Axa, would be a popular choice in the City. But a source cautions: ‘After the Brexit vote, they’re not keen having a Frog at the helm.’ BT Chairman Sir Mike Rake, 68, a deceptively benign old mouse, was wheeled on to Radio 4 yesterday to defend its controversial Openreach business. Odd how rarely BT’s £5.4m-a-year chief executive, Gavin Patterson, is called upon to do the firefighting. Observers draw comparisons to TS Eliot’s Macavity – ‘the cat who’s never there’. Preening catalogue model Gavin, 48, certainly possesses the vanity of a blowdried Bengal moggy. Preppy hedge funder James Matthews, 40, who is to marry Pippa Middleton, is launching his own luxury boutique. The online store will sell ‘thoughtfully curated’ homeware and jewellery, including customised timepieces by JCB digger heir George Bamford costing £17,000 a pop. A tad more upscale than his future in-laws’ own knick-knick firm Party Pieces, which churns out thrifty trinkets for more unassuming clientele. Bookmaker William Hill’s plans for a £5bn merger with online gaming firm 888 and Rank casinos was good news for its stakeholders, who saw shares rocket 11pc yesterday. Just so long as none took advice from the plonkers at Berenberg. Last week, the German bank urged clients to dump William Hill shares pronto. Former Chancellor George Osborne hosted a farewell dinner for Treasury staff last week at Mayfair’s Nobu, the £100-a-head canteen popular with glamorous society doxies. Financial dignitaries will miss Osborne’s culinary largesse. Earlier this year, he whisked International Monetary Fund saucepot Christine Lagarde off to supper at Heston Blumenthal’s Knightsbridge haunt, Dinner. During an IMF trip to Peru last year, he took officials to gourmands’ mecca, Central, ranked fourth-best restaurant in the world. I fear drab successor Philip Hammond retains less rarefied tastes.