Credit crisis diary: A nasty case of indigestion

Well done to Sir John Rose, chief executive of Rolls-Royce, who picked up the Orange Business Leader of the Year award at a glittering ceremony at Grosvenor House hotel in London on Tuesday evening. Let's hope Sir John's gala dinner wasn't in any way spoilt by his knowledge that he would have to announce 2,000 job cuts the following morning.

If you're going to sack them, play by the book

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Gallows humour is setting in at City brokers. The Diary got wind of job cuts to be announced at one stockbroker today and asked a leading light of the firm what he thought. "Job cuts on a Friday?" was the answer. "That's not playing the game – everyone knows you announce the cull on a Tuesday so we've got plenty of time to talk to headhunters: if they do it on a Friday, half the firm will do themselves in over the weekend."

Waiting for the signal that they're in the clear

Still, at least one big name in the City has not announced significant job losses yet. There has been no word from Merrill Lynch on the prospects for its thousands of staff. Unfortunately, that's cold comfort for the rest of the City, because Merrills is almost always the last to wield the axe. "Once Merrills has announced redundancies, the rest of us will finally know we're safe," says one trader.

Watch your head, boss

Richard Lambert's less-than-glowing appraisal of the Government's response to the economic downturn recorded in this newspaper today reminds the Diary of one of its favourite stories about the CBI's head honcho. Mr Lambert has a big personality and a big head to go with it (literally, we mean, he's pretty modest actually). So much so that on a trip to see a coal mine in Fife, he had to tour the dangerous caverns with no head protection. They couldn't find a hard hat big enough.

Sorry to kick you when you're down

Apologies to Canary Wharf Group, which took exception to the Diary's tongue-in-cheek suggestion earlier this week that its shopping malls somehow resembled the sort of industrial wastelands seen onEighties newsreels. Its sense of humour failure can't have beenconnected to an announcementyesterday from the property giant British Land. It has written downthe value of its 11 per cent stake in Wharf owner Songbird Estates by a whopping 40 per cent.