The Canary

Saving your bacon: Denmark is joining the Bahamas and the Virgin Islands as a tax haven. The Danish government has abolished tax on profits made by companies abroad and 200 foreign firms have set up holding companies in Denmark to take advantage. Observers fear this generous tax environment could encourage less than credible companies to Denmark. "If there are no checks on profits, it is a perfect arena for money-laundering," says one analyst. Scandinavian firms, including many from Sweden who are taxed almost out of existence, are moving to Copenhagen.

Long-term plans: Long-Term Capital Management, the hedge fund that caused Wall Street to totter last year, is bouncing back. It wants to expand operations, eight months after it was bailed out by a consortium of 14 securities firms and banks with a $3.6bn cash infusion. LTCM's founder, John Meriwether, the legendary bond trader and hero of the book Liar's Poker, is hunting high-profile Wall Street names to help him raise new funds. Likely contenders include Christopher Flowers, a former Goldman Sachs partner, and Jamie Dimon, president of Citigroup. Meriwether's long- term plan is to return the $3.6bn to the consortium. But before he goes on a road-show to raise funds, they have insisted he return $1bn of the bail-out capital. When David Modest, an LTCM partner was asked at a party what he does for a living, he replied: "Last year I worked trying to blow up the world's financial system." Let's hope he is now a reformed character.

Zinzan scores: Relations between a City trader and his wife are strained after he was asked to register the birth of their first-born. They had agreed to name him Robert Charles, but as the trader was filling in the forms, "I don't know what came over me," he says. "Suddenly I found myself writing it and then it was too late." So his son is officially Zinzan. When he finally plucked up the courage to tell his wife, her face crumpled and she went to bed in silence.

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