The dastardly MR. Deedes
■ Morgan Stanley’s Canary Wharf office has been a hotbed of giddy excitement. Chisel-cheeked Hollywood studmuffin Patrick Dempsey, 52, best known for playing Dr Derek ‘McDreamy’ Shepherd in hospital drama Grey’s Anatomy, popped in to do research this week for a future role. My man on the trading floor reports: ‘He wasn’t short of females offering their mentoring services. Nor male ones, for that matter.’
■ Domino’s Pizza delivered its first trading update yesterday under chief financial officer David Bauernfeind, after predecessor Rachel Osborne departed in June. Bauernfeind is the fourth head bean-counter in four years to serve under the pizza parlour’s not-asnice-as-he-looks boss David Wild. He’s so far been in post for ten days. Who said it wouldn’t last?
■ Why hasn’t Amazon founder Jeff Bezos commented on the disappearance of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, last seen entering Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Turkey a fortnight ago? As proprietor of the Post – and a model one thus far, it should be said – one might have expected him to have at least issued a statement on the matter. Surely Bezos isn’t afraid of offending the Saudi Kingdom, where he has business interests? He’s always more than happy to irritate President Trump.
■ Rolls-Royce is moving its HQ in Victoria’s Buckingham Gate – minutes from the Palace – to the Guardian’s glassfronted property in King’s Cross. The area now also houses Facebook and Google, and is unrecognisable from its previous incarnation as London’s most notorious red light district.
■ Once-mighty US department store Sears’ decision to file for bankruptcy raises inevitable questions about its chairman and majority shareholder Edward Lampert. Some accuse the billionaire hedge funder of being out of step with the store’s traditionally middle-class clientele. Alarm bells first began ringing among staff when the ex-Goldman trader, 56, began espousing to them the customer service he received in luxury store Hermes while buying £800 shoes.
■ Craft brewers Brewdog today launches Hop Exchange, a new beer whose price correlates with the movement of the FTSE 100. Something to look forward to during the next meltdown, I suppose.