Business Diary: Geithner joins the NYSE patriots

Tim Geithner , US Treasury Secretary, seems like a sensible fellow, so what a pity that he seems to be joining Chuck Schumer, the Democrat senator for New York, in his lamentable whingeing about the merger of the New York Stock Exchange and Deutsche Börse. Schumer, affronted by the thought of the Germans taking over, has threatened to try to wreck the deal unless the new entity has a name with NYSE at the front, rather than Deutsche. And it looks as if he's signed up Geithner to the battle – the Treasury Secretary says he "very much" agrees with Schumer.

Kraft hire has her work cut out

We say good luck to Lindsay Kennedy, the new head of corporate communications in the UK for Kraft, the confectionery giant. It certainly needs a better press here – in paying £11.7bn last year for Britain's favourite chocolatier, Cadbury, Kraft made itself public enemynumber one for a little while. Nor are investors particularly impressed with developments since then – last week even Irene Rosenfeld, Kraft's boss, said she was "disappointed" with the performance of Cadbury during its first period under Kraft's management.

Tesco too costly for once?

Still in PR world, an interesting little piece of gossip doing the rounds in Westminster: that Craig Oliver, the former News at Ten editor who has been hired to replace Andy Coulson as David Cameron's press chief, was not necessarily the Prime Minister's first choice. Rumour has it that Number 10 would have very much liked to hire Lucy Neville-Rolfe, the highly respected director of corporate affairs at Tesco, but suspected she was out of their price range.

Mailout bill follows bailout

The financial crisis continues to cause the US all sorts offiscal problems. Having seen the credit crisis plunge the world into downturn, the US Congress set up the Financial Crisis Inquiry to investigate its causes. Now its report is out – and is being mailed all around the world at American taxpayers' expense. At 550 pages, the postage bill for this global mail-out must have added a sizeable chunk to that already enormous US budget deficit.

businessdiary@independent.co.uk