Pembroke: End of the line

Pity the senior civil servants at the Department of Trade and Industry who are facing the terrible prospect of life with only two telephone lines after a DTI drive to cut costs. Grade Six officers and above will still have their ordinary direct lines, whose numbers are widely published. And they will still be able to hide behind their secretaries' skirts when occasion demands, for their lines also remain intact. What the senior bods will lose, according to desolate DTI sources, are the handy direct lines whose numbers are private and only to be distributed to such VIPs as spymasters and mistresses.

Tis the end of an era. John Pritzker, the American financier, is leaving the board of Berisford International, which he joined at the behest of Berisford's ex-chairman, Ephraim Margulies. Pritzker is perhaps best known for his walk-on part in Barbarians At The Gate, the book about the RJR Nabisco bid battle. It relates how one of the (ultimately unsuccessful) bidders needed pounds 100m of finance in a hurry and turned to Pritzker, who contacted Berisford. The commitment was duly made after only one telephone call. Ah, those were the days.

In another boardroom move we hear that Philip Morris, the international tobacco company beset, like most, by poor publicity on health issues, has appointed Geoffrey C Bible as executive vice-president worldwide tobacco. Since this post was previously unfilled since 1991, we can only assume that Philip Morris's prayers were increasingly going unanswered.

Observers of the brick company Ibstock Johnsen had their first introduction to its new chairman, Colin Hope, when he came hobbling into yesterday's results meeting on a sprained ankle after toppling downstairs. Shareholders will hope that both chairman and company prove less accident-prone in future, since it also fell to Mr Hope to unveil the biggest loss - pounds 27m - in Ibstock's history.

It has been a mixed year at Rolls- Royce. 5,300 of its workers have joined the dole queues as part of what Sir Ralph Robins, chairman, describes in his contribution to the annual report published yesterday as 'part of our commitment to lowering costs and improving productivity'. Profits of pounds 51m were erased as the company lurched into losses of pounds 184m. But the salary paid in 1992 to the two men who served as RR's chairman - Sir Ralph himself, and his predecessor, Lord Tombs - went up by 33 per cent.