The City Diary

Blackwatch: the latest in the trial of the tycoon

BITC on the scent of the Rose

More chicanery from Business in the Community (BITC), the organisation dedicated to promoting "responsible business practice". Chief executive Julia Cleverdon was overheard last week discussing who would replace the organisation's chairman Sir Mike Rake, who has also recently become the chairman of BT. Top of Ms Cleverdon's wish list is Stuart Rose (pictured), the Luke Skywalker of the high street and chief executive of Marks & Spencer. Earlier this year BITC buttered up Rose with its Ambassador Award for "individuals whose leadership and commitment to responsible business has resulted in changes and improvements inside their own company..." But surely, with harder times ahead on the high street, Rose has enough on his plate.

Bureaucrats in red

Chris de Burgh has never exactly been trendy. But he must have sunk low to have a newly organised government department named after him. The wags at the former DTI, now renamed the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR for short), have taken to calling it "Chris" (as in "de Burgh"). Really funny civil servants call it "Lady in Red" after the crooner's famous love song. Even BERR Secretary of State John Hutton recently cracked the joke at a nuclear industry reception. One BERR (sorry, "Chris") mole was not impressed: "It's an old joke. He didn't make it."

Commercial break at the BBC

It seems that the BBC is getting a taste for doing a bit of business, and not just on telephone lines. Evan Davies, the economics editor, has recently fronted a pilot of a television show named 'The Bottom Line'. Followers of the Beeb's business coverage on Radio 4 may be familiar with the radio version of the programme. Anyway, it's now not media apostasy to dare to believe that business might be quite interesting and done by people who aren't necessarily money-grabbing monsters.

Devolution ahead for SMG

Now that smg, the media company, is flogging off Virgin Radio and its outdoor and cinema advertising divisions, could the company be in line for a name change?

Once the sale processes have been concluded, all SMG will have left is its Scottish television arm. So surely wouldn't it make more sense if it simply became STV? It would certainly go down well with the tub-thumping nationalists that now rule the roost in the Scottish Parliament.

You can't beat a tracker

Sir Nigel Rudd, the former chairman of Boots, and Anthony Bolton, the legendary Fidelity fund manager, have a new business interest. They have emerged as investors in buddi, a new GPS location device. The gadget, which has been nicknamed "bratnav", can be used by parents to track their delinquent offspring. If only hedge fund managers could be tracked as easily.

Lost in the City

A press release arrives from the Industry and Parliament Trust saying that 21 MPs have taken its "Introducing the City" course in a bid to lessen their ignorance of life in the Square Mile. However, not one of the 14 members of the Treasury Select Committee, which recently quizzed the bigwigs of the private equity industry on how much tax they pay, appears to have enrolled.

Blackwatch: the latest in the trial of the tycoon

Still proclaiming his innocence, disgraced media tycoon Lord Black will return to the Chicago court where he was found guilty of fraud and obstruction of justice on 1 August for his bail hearing.

With his British passport confiscated, Lord Black's movements are currently limited to Chicago and his property in Palm Beach, Florida, but he may apply to be allowed to travel to Canada until he is sentenced in November this year. The judge, Amy Sty Eve, has said that she is concerned that, once he is in Canada, he might fight extradition, while prosecutors want to see his $21m bail revoked and have him jailed until his sentencing.

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