Business Diary: Green alternative to Royal Bank?

Residents of Edinburgh West will be pleased to hear their Liberal Democrat MP, Mike Crockart, is doing his best to bring new jobs to the constituency. Crockart was leading a delegation at the House of Commons yesterday calling for the headquarters of the new Green Investment Bank to be sited in the area he represents. Is the MP being a little greedy? After all, with Royal Bank of Scotland based at Gogarburn in the constituency, Edinburgh West is already home to one world-class bank. Oh hang on a moment, that's not quite right.

Bloomberg has its eye on business

Why is Bloomberg TV's new programme, which began on Monday evening, called Eye to Eye? For two reasons, actually: because host Francine Lacqua interviews a well-known business figure on the programme each week – and because the inquisitions are conducted on the London Eye. First up this week was Sir Philip Green, which seemed a bit unkind. The retail tycoon had a difficult enough weekend with protesters targeting his Top Shop stores without being given a bird's-eye view of the damage.

Black Rock cleans up for television

After the marketing folk at Black Rock, the fund management business, agreed to let CNBC screen a programme live from their offices, they were suddenly struck by a terrible thought. What if their less tidy employees let the firm down? So out went an edict, decreeing that all staff had to ensure their desks were completely clear of personal belongings by the night before the show or face the black bag treatment. "It really isn't an option to distinguish yourselves by having a messy desk on live TV; that outcome will be eliminated for you," the memo concluded.

BBC online crash: no one cares

Senior BBC staff were having kittens yesterday following an hour-long outage of the corporation's entire website overnight. Cue a grovelling apology from the BBC News website editor Steve Herrmann – only for users to post a string of comments saying they hadn't been at all upset. There are certainly bigger disasters to worry about for the Beeb. As one commenter said: "Thankfully Radio 4 Long Wave did not go off the air at the same time."

businessdiary@independent.co.uk