The dastardly Mr Deedes
Panmure Gordon’s oily chief Patric Johnson says he’d gladly speak to David Cameron should the ex-PM be looking for a job at his old family firm. Says Johnson, 44: ‘If he’d like to join the back of the queue for employment we’d be more than happy to see him.’ What cheek. Though Poor Dave must be hoping he lands a cushy job soon. An ex-crony tells me ludicrous, tax-avoiding pop star Bono has been hassling him about his latest save-the-planet wheeze.
At the Institute of Directors’ annual convention yesterday, frisky IoD chairman Lady (Barbara) Judge paid tribute to outgoing director general Simon Walker. She said: ‘Simon is pretty much perfect. He only has one problem – he’s a man.’ So is £349,000-a-year Walker’s successor, speccy Clugston boss Stephen Martin. But I expect still-fragrant Babs, 69, will now be wearing the trousers.
Re the IoD convention, Saatchi & Saatchi’s former executive chairman Kevin Roberts, who resigned his £3m-a-year post last month after suggesting women lacked ambition, was the afternoon’s final speaker. He chuntered on for 20 minutes spouting indecipherable corporate gobbledegook (sample head-scratcher: ‘Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.’) Poor show. Some had only hung around in the hope baldy-locks Roberts, 64, would slag off his ludicrously oversensitive employers.
Billionaire Ineos boss Jim Ratcliffe angers sandal-wearing environmentalists with his championing of fracking, which he insists is completely safe. Croaky-voiced Ratcliffe, 63, also owns a gas guzzling £130m yacht and four private jets, but isn’t without lentil tendencies. He’s planning a ‘carbon neutral’ home in the New Forest which runs solely on renewable energy. The modish £4m schloss will come fitted with hydraulic stilts to protect it from rising sea levels.
German publisher Axel Springer’s Aryan-looking boss Mathias Doepfner reckons the UK will thrive under Brexit. ‘In three to five years from now, my bet would be that England will be better off than continental Europe.’ A pity £8m-a-year Herr Doepfner, 53, was unable to get his paws on the pro-EU Financial Times, which he was pipped to last year by Japanese firm Nikkei. The paper’s feverish anti-Brexit tone is now beyond tedious.