Business Diary: Caan safe in his non-dom Den

James Caan, for one, is pleased with the Chancellor's spending review. "Nobody likes to see spending cuts but the Government has to make savings, just as every businessman has to," the Dragon's Den tycoon says. Still, might the cuts have been lower, were it not for wealthy businessmen choosing to become non-doms, depriving the UK of tax revenues? What does co-Dragon Duncan Bannatyne think about Caan's non-dom status now, we wonder?

Business writers getting younger

Remember when Nigel Lawson, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, dismissed the City's economists as "teenage scribblers"?Now the ifs School of Finance is setting out to find the real thing, with a Young Business Writer of the Year contest, for youngsters aged 14 to 19. A £500 first prize awaits the writer of the best 1,000-word article on the subject: "Does the UK economy need rebalancing away from financial services?"

Behind every successful lady...

While women have penetrated many areas of high finance, the hedge-fund club remains almost exclusively male. So you can understand why Pacific Alternative Asset Management, a top-performing US-based fund, makes a virtue of the fact it is mostly owned and run by women. It's something different to sell. Just one hitch, reports the New York Times – court documents now reveal that for many years, S Donald Sussman, a well-known hedge fund mogul – and very much a man – has stood behind the fund. The question now is whether clients will cry foul.

Cadbury takes it beyond a yolk

Life moves on. The Takeover Panel was busy yesterday publishing revised rules for acquisitions, in a response to the furore surrounding Kraft's takeover of Cadbury earlier this year. Meanwhile, the chocolate company itself was busy doing what it has always done, selling sweets. It has launched the "Screme Egg" for Halloween, using kiwi fruit to produce a suitably unpleasant green gooey centre. Now Cadbury is US-owned, what better way to impress Trick or Treaters?

businessdiary@independent.co.uk