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Credit crisis diary: Probably not recruiting after all

Friday 31 October 2008 01:00 GMT
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Diary thought it had some good news for investment bankers in need of a new opportunity, having clocked one leading City firm's website advertising 77 vacancies yesterday. Apologies for disappointing you. The firm in question is one Lehman Brothers, whose website administrators have presumably found themselves rather too indisposed to update the recruitment section.

Mandy cops some flak

It hasn't taken Peter Mandelson, the new Business minister, long to incur the wrath of the business community. His comments yesterday that a new tax on empty buildings introduced earlier this year was somehow good news for small businesses has enraged the British Property Federation. So much so that the federation published a string of furious ripostes from small businesses up and down the country. "Mandelson is detached from reality", was about as complimentary as it got. The BPF even managed to recruit Labour's chief whip, Nick Brown, to its campaign. No friend of Lord Mandelson, he too is calling for the tax to be reformed to help out his constituents in Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend.

They know who their friends are

Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours. Especially Iceland, which fortunately seems to be blessed with them. The good folk of the Faroe Islands revealed yesterday that they were prepared to lend their North Atlantic friends 300m Danish kroner in this time of need. That's about £32m, around 1 per cent of the cash Iceland is looking for, but every little bit helps.

The Queen's bank reaches out

There was a time when Coutts, banker to the Queen, was more than happy doing business with the highest echelons of society from exclusive offices in London. These days, even the most blue-blooded of banks can't afford to be so snooty. So there will soon be new branches of Coutts in leafy Cheltenham, sunny Exeter and even bohemian Brighton.

Definitely time to put on the tin hats

Sequoia Capital is one of the world's most successful venture capital outfits, having backed just about every major success story coming out of Silicon Valley in the past 15 years. So when it's nervous about the world we live in, it's time to get really anxious. The title of its first slide in a recent presentation to analysts. "RIP, good times". You have been warned.

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