Leading article: Who doesn't want to look the business?

The life of a master of the universe is not what it was. In the old days, they would make a few million before lunch, tear into some red meat, asset strip a few companies in the afternoon and be bragging in a wine bar by the close of the markets.

But now, it seems, they might have to fit a botox injection into that busy schedule. According to Spear's magazine, known as "the bible of the banking fraternity", high-powered financiers are increasingly turning to all sorts of traditional female beauty treatments, from facelifts to tummy tucks. Even "man-boob" reduction operations are growing in popularity.

The trend has been put down to the depressing modern pressure on men, felt by women for decades, to look young and vibrant in the boardroom. But the fact that these plastic-surgery friendly financiers are reported to be starting such treatments in their thirties, a decade earlier than their female counterparts, suggests that this has as much to do with old-fashioned vanity as insidious workplace pressure.

Either way though, the response of many taxpayers will be that, as long as the financiers are injecting poison into their foreheads rather than into the global economy, things can only get better.