In Davos, it's the footwear that tells you everything you need to know about the seniority of the delegate.

The Prime Minister used his visit to the World Economic Forum yesterday to launch a new initiative he said he hoped would focus the minds of countries around the world on finally getting a deal from the Doha round of world trade talks.

He has been the invisible man of the BP oil spill disaster – but next week he takes centre stage.

BP'S chief executive, Tony Hayward, was awarded a 41 per cent pay rise in 2009 despite the company's profits coming in more than 50 per cent down on the previous year.

BP's two-year hunt to fill one of Britain's most prestigious corporate jobs ended today with the appointment of Carl-Henric Svanberg as chairman.

A family business with grand ambitions

Curious goings-on in Knightsbridge, where John Duffield is sub-letting an entire floor of the former HQ of New Star, the fund manager he founded and was subsequently forced to see sold to Henderson after it got into financial difficulties. As we report on page 44, Mr Duffield plans to launch a new fund management business, Hyde Park. But why do his PR people insist Hyde Park has been set up purely to run the Duffield family fortune? The clan presumably has a bob or two, but do they really need the whole floor of a Knightsbridge office block, or a separate chief executive in the form of John Jay, the ex-New Star marketing director?

Sir Tom McKillop, the embattled former chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland, resigned as a director of the energy giant BP yesterday, despite previously putting his name forward for re-election at the group's annual general meeting on 16 April.

Niall Fitzgerald, the deputy chairman of Thomson Reuters, has emerged as one of the favourites to succeed Peter Sutherland as chairman of BP when he steps down in April.