From the City: We have had a dry run for this great debate in the one about the adoption of the euro

Lloyds' figures on Thursday showed the bank is fast returning to health and triggered a wave of speculation about when the Government might begin to sell its 39 per cent stake.

At a media breakfast on Tuesday Andrew Sentance, the in-house economist for Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, pointed out an oddity in the national income figures.

Three people I met this week who work in the upper echelons of Big Four accounting firms said they intended to retire soon and thereafter find a role as a non-executive director somewhere. They don't much mind what kind of business – provided it is not a bank.

Outlook In February 2010, the defence giant BAE Systems paid fines totalling £288m to the US Department of Justice and Britain's Serious Fraud Office in one of the murkiest and most embarrassing episodes in its history. The penalty to settle long-running investigations into alleged corporate bribery dragged BAE's name through the mud as the DoJ – never one for mincing its words – accused it of making "hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to third parties, while knowing of a high probability that money would be passed on to foreign government decision-makers to favour BAE in the award of defence contracts". The SFO fined it £30m for failing to accurately record "commission payments" to a "marketing adviser" in Tanzania.

Outlook "What is good for the UK economy is good for Lloyds." So said chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio as the Black Horse moved its numbers back into the black and whetted the City's appetite over an imminent sale of the taxpayer's 39 per cent stake in the bank.

Economic View: What happens to US rates affects the rest of the world but so too does what happens to the US economy

Outlook Complaints from senior politicians over profiteering, criticisms that bosses treat customers poorly – the predictable reactions to Centrica's results get more and more like those that afflict the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Outlook Now his business is concentrated about as far from Britain as you can get, Tony Hayward is ideally placed to comment on our looming energy crisis. A manifesto published by the former BP boss the other day urged the Government not to turn its back on fossil fuels, to build our own nuclear power stations instead of hoping the French will do it for us and to slash subsidies for on and offshore windpower. Sounds easy.

Outlook When I was a student, spending more time scribbling for the university newspaper than leafing through great literary works, PricewaterhouseCoopers was a godsend. The accounting firm always placed with us the largest advert of any recruiter to plug its milk-round days, money that shored up The Chronicle's finances on more than one occasion.

Outlook Eyebrows were raised four years ago when Sir Nigel Rudd took the chair at Invensys, the industrial controls group that agreed to be sold yesterday to Schneider Electric of France. It was too small, too dull and probably didn't have much of an independent future. All that remains true today, except by repairing its finances and plugging its pension deficit, Sir Nigel and his chief executive Wayne Edmunds have made it saleable.

Outlook When regulators at the Bank of England decided earlier this year that Barclays and Nationwide should increase their capital buffers to cover at least 3 per cent of their total assets, the two lenders fought back vigorously.

Outlook Nationwide will have longer than Barclays to meet its 3 per cent leverage target. The mutual has to reach the target by 2015. But the management isn't very happy about it. Chief executive, Graham Beale, complained that the leverage ratio set by the regulator at the Bank of England is "crude" and "unsophisticated" because it ignores the fact that Nationwide's balance sheet is full of safe residential mortgages. The trouble with this analysis is that no one really knows in advance of a crisis which assets are safe and which aren't. That's why it's prudent for all lenders to hold decent capital buffers to cover unexpected losses.