Pembroke: Anger at air leak

SIR COLIN MARSHALL, chief executive of British Airways, has been much exercised recently, what with ding-dong battles with Virgin and union unrest. He treated himself to a further workout yesterday morning when, happening to be in Peking and watching the World Business programme on BBC World Service Television, he saw that details of an alleged pounds 9m settlement with Virgin were, somewhat embarrassingly, being broadcast around the world. Never a man to lie back and do nothing, he rang up BA's London press office and chewed them up over the source of the leak.

What Sir Colin didn't realise at the time was that the same programme he was watching in China was also being screened at 35,000 feet - and watched by passengers on all the BA flights that screen television news.

CUTTING THE FAT following an acquisition took on a new meaning for Emap when it conducted a review of the 14 business and specalist magazines acquired from the Thomson Corporation in February. Apart from the usual chauffeur-driven limos, it also found two masseurs on the payroll. A further two were available on a freelance basis.

SO MANY GILTS to sell (an average of pounds 1bn a week); so few gilts analysts to choose from. The public sector borrowing requirement is shaking up City firms as competition hots up for the best followers in town. The latest defector is Simon Briscoe, number two to Roger Bootle at Midland Markets. He has quit to lead the gilts research at Warburg Securities.

Not only does Mr Briscoe have a good reputation, he also enjoys the added advantage of having worked at the Treasury. Thus, he benefits from the curious City tradition of lionising economists who have quit the Treasury but despising Ethose who remain.

A BEMUSED press officer at the crisis-cTHER write errorhallenged Lloyd's of London insurance market returned from his statutory holiday leave to find his desk littered with hostile press cuttings from the past week or so. 'Why has someone left 1992's cuttings on my desk?' he inquired of his masters. Plus ca change . . .