Business Diary: The great Barclays board cull

A new tome from the former Financial Times editor Sir Geoffrey Owen makes fascinating reading. Evolution or Revolution charts the way in which company boards have changed over the past 50 years. Sir Geoffrey highlights the case of Barclays Bank, which had more than 40 directors at one stage during the 1960s. It's now down to 13, including only two executive directors. A good job too, one might say, given the prices those executives charge the bank for their services.

Cashing in on expensive fuel

Here is your chance to make enough cash to fill up the car next weekend. The bookmaker William Hill has changed its odds that the Chancellor will scrap his plans to add 1p to fuel duty in next week's Budget from 2/5 to 4/11. Hills is still offering 4/1 that George Osborne will announce he is to cut the rate of fuel duty, or you can try your luck at 9/2 that the 1p rise will go ahead as planned. With petrol prices still at record highs, the first option, at the very least, looks nailed on.

Free paper seeks slim designer

It's good to see that City AM, the free morning newspaper that is handed out to financial types in London, is going from strength to strength these days. It has broken into profit of late and is expanding its distribution footprint. Is the secret of the paper's success to employ only those staff with the right level of fitness? The paper is currently recruiting for its art department and is advertising for a "middleweight designer". Presumably, there's no point in applying for the job if you're a little on the tubby side.

Facebook really does clean up

The Diary has sometimes regarded the claims of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as just a little fanciful. We know the social networking business is fantastically successful, but can he really deliver the world domination he so often seems to promise? Well, maybe so, if new data from market research outfit Experian Hitwise is anything to go by. It reveals that, in the UK at least, Facebook now gets more online traffic than pornographic sites combined. If it's really managing to outdo the one business that everyone knows works on the web, the world is its oyster.

businessdiary@independent.co.uk