The TimesNovember 8, 2008

Bankers still do not have a shred of decency

Martin Waller: City Diary
There is a mood abroad, put forward by the banks' spinners and spokesweasels, that the demigods who have almost destroyed the banking system through their greed, arrogance and hubris have suffered enough. Time to lay off, be a bit kinder, their share options worthless, broken men, etc, etc...

Regular readers of this column will have a fair idea of what I think of that. Come back after about, ooh, a decade of humility and contrition. So it is put to me by certain parties that Sir Fred “The Shred” Goodwin did have the decency to subscribe for new shares in the Royal Bank of Scotland rights issue, as revealed in the issue document. Gesture of faith in the future of the bank, etc, etc...

Or one could put it another way. Having driven the share price down by various idiocies, such as the ABN Amro purchase at the top of the market - which he was still defending as late as August - Goodwin has taken the view that no one could to a worse job than he, and so there is only one way for the shares to go now.

No, I am not going to lay off. But I wonder how long before Goodwin pops up in his next job?



An eagle-eyed reader spots something odd about Barack Obama. He apparently buys his ties in the UK. The striped neckties he wears have the stripes sloping down from the left shoulder. (It's true, I've checked.) This, of course, has its roots in the British military, in schools, clubs and so on and is protected. When Brookes Brothers introduced the British design into the US, they had to slope the stripes the other way. Apparently, you can often spot an American thus. My reader assures me this is true, and he sounds entirely convincing. Does the President-elect buy them by mail order?

Someone else, a West Ham fan, assures me that Obama is, too. He has family links with London and apparently went to a game there some years ago. Again, I can't confirm this. But everyone obviously wants to find a link with him.



Lehman case should be a turn-up for the books

Creditors of Lehman Brothers meet the administrators in person for the first time at the 02, in East London, next Friday. Lehman is the world's biggest bankruptcy casualty and as you would expect there are

hundreds of creditors, and these are the ones PwC, the administrator, knows about.

A quick glance at the list shows one such is the much-loved British Library. A spokeswoman for the Library said Lehman, like lots of businesses, borrowed from the library's vast collection. She had no idea whether Lehman had returned books it borrowed before the bank collapsed, but she confirmed the Library is out of pocket.

Less sympathy will go to the 25 law firms on the creditor list including Freshfields, Allen & Overy and Slaughter and May. Or to corporate spinners Brunswick, which took a remarkably optimistic line on its client, Lehman Brothers.



Was it something I said? I wrote several weeks ago of my disbelief that the Financial Times would choose to publish a bumper issue of its vulgar How To Spend It supplement, detailing the easiest ways to spend your bonus. Not exactly in keeping with the times. Now I hear they are planning to ditch the equivalent this Christmas.



No kiss and tell something something

Sir John Stuttard, the last-but-one Lord Mayor as of lunchtime yesterday when Ian Luder took over, has written a book about his year in office and the City in general.

Whittington to World Financial Centre: The City of London and its Lord Mayor is published at the end of this month and about a third is devoted to the complicated Corporation, with its aldermen, sheriffs, livery companies and, of course, the mayoralty itself.

The rest is Stuttard's views on how the City became pre-eminent and the subsequent credit crunch. At 300 pages, with 160 photographs, it is a weighty work and arises out of two essays he penned, one about his year in office and the other about Northern Rock and the crunch.

“When I finished [the essays], I thought, my goodness, there's a book in this,” he tells me. “It should appeal to people who want to know what the lord mayor does, the traditional stuff, what's happening internationally and the regulatory environment.”

Though Stuttard kept a diary as lord mayor, those he met should be reassured that some of the more sensitive episodes have been omitted. “It's not a kiss and tell, and I haven't been rude to anybody,” he says.

No, it's best to leave that to an expert like me.