Business Diary: No slacking off early for Osborne

Can you get from Westminster to Wimbledon in 15 minutes? No, nor can George Osborne, which is why it was so generous of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to stick around for Prime Minister's Questions yesterday.

Osborne had tickets for the tennis, you see, in the Royal Box no less, and play started at 1pm. But the Chancellor couldn't leave his best friend and boss without a bit of support for the big match of the day in the Commons, so he had to miss the beginning of the tennis.

Glencore's old pals rally round

Talking of loyalty, a big round of applause to Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Credit Suisse, all of which published buy notes on Glencore, the giant commodities trader yesterday. All three banks, of course, worked as advisers to Glencore during its mega-flotation last month (along with half the City). With company's share price still languishing below its debut level, it's good to see its advisers continuing to do their bit.

Madoff says judge got it wrong

Having presided over a Ponzi scheme in which savers lost literally billions of dollars, Bernard Madoff can't have expected much in the way of mercy from the judicial system after he got caught. But he does object to the portrayal of him in court by Judge Denny Chin, who sentenced him to 150 years in jail. On Chin's description of him as "extraordinarily evil", Madoff tells The New York Times, "I just think that was totally unrealistic and unfair". He's been scapegoated, you see. "In my mind, Chin was anything but fair, with zero understanding of the industry," Madoff adds. The judge made him "the human piñata of Wall Street," while financial firms and government officials got to "walk away free".

The protection banks don't need

It's an easy mistake to make, particularly if you're not familiar with Murex, the software system on which many investment banks run their capital markets operations. Still, it might be interesting to read the applications received by the well-known City headhunter who posted this on their jobs board this week, "Candidate must have over five years of experience with knowledge of Durex's system architecture as well as Durex's front-end".

businessdiary@independent.co.uk