The dastardly Mr Deedes
■ Ex-Financial Times publisher Pearson has sold the paper’s much-coveted Thames-side building, One Southwark Bridge, to investment firm M&G for £115m. It’s another tidy piece of business for Pearson, having crowbarred £844m out of Japanese firm Nikkei for the FT three years ago. Nikkei are moving the Pink ’Un back to its original City premises, Bracken House, which Pearson sold in 1987 for a then unheard of sum of £143m. An FT source ponders: ‘It’s much smaller than our current offices so we’re curious as to where we’re all going to go.’ They added nervously: ‘If we are all going to go, that is.’
■ Virgin Money chief Jayne-Anne Gadhia was named leader of the year at this week’s Lloyds Bank business awards. Well deserved, I’m sure. Though I wonder if Lloyds might be softening her up as a potential successor to Antonio Horta-Osorio when the smoothie feels it’s time to spend more time in his sun recliner. Sprightly JayneAnne is about to be jobless following Clydesdale’s £1.7bn takeover of Virgin, albeit £1.8m richer. She’s already politely turned her snout up at the vacant TSB job.
■ A tech entrepreneur has paid £40,000 at a charity auction to have lunch with hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman. Impressive, but peanuts compared to £3m someone paid earlier this year to dine with legendary investor Warren Buffett. Ackman should have upped the bidding by offering to bring along his beguiling fiancee Neri Oxman who dated gormless-looking actor Brad Pitt following his Brangelina break-up. ■ The original Annabel’s spun its final Abba medley this week after the club moved to a bigger, glitzier site next door. A scattering of former regulars attended the last hurrah – Oka founder Lady Astor, racehorse magnate Anthony Oppenheimer etc. Late Lonrho boss ‘Tiny’ Rowland’s entrepreneur son Toby recalled: ‘My parents used to love to come here and complain about Brigitte Nielsen.’
■ ‘Is Blackrock the new Goldman Sachs?’ asks The Spectator, pointing to the investment behemoth’s spiralling growth and growing fondness for big political hires such as George Osborne. Now, with an extraordinary $6.4trillion under management, it’s a pertinent question.