Business Diary: City to remember the Big Bang

Calling the City's old boys: want to relive memories of the privatisation years, the days when mobile phones weighed as much as iron, and the innocent time when financial services was a growth sector we were proud of?

If so, the London Stock Exchange's Big Bang Reunion could be just the event for you. It takes place next month at the City's Drapers Hall on the 25th anniversary of Big Bang, the overhaul of dealing and trading that was such a revolution at the time. All proceeds will go to worthwhile charities.

Forum joins fight for equality

Diary is fully in agreement with the aims of the Women's Business Forum, which yesterday launched a campaign to address gender inequality in the workplace. It wants companies to adopt flexible working for women and men, and to take immediate action to help to get more women into senior management roles. The organisation held a conference yesterday to launch the campaign, highlighting eight speakers, five of whom turned out to be, erm, men.

Magazine has little love for the Mail

Has Haymarket, the publishing house controlled by Conservative peer Lord Heseltine, fallen out with the Daily Mail in some way? We ask because the latest issue of Management Today, its flagship title, includes not one but two separate digs at the newspaper. First, editor Matthew Gwyther uses his leader to accuse it of liking failure, and then star columnist Howard Davies, the City luminary-turned academic, feigns surprise at accusations that the Daily Mail is malicious. All harmless fun, of course.

Vince predicts Wall Street rally

Worried about your stock market portfolio in these troubled times? Fear not, for one trader is promising that another bull market is just around the corner. The gentleman in question, one Vince Stanzione, an independent trader, is telling anyone who will listen that Wall Street is poised to hit an all-time high during the first half of next year. Sceptical? That's what Vince wants. "Excuse my language, but when everyone vomits and never wants to see another stock, I am the one cleaning up the mess," he says.

businessdiary@independent.co.uk