City Diary

Whatever happens in the NatWest bid saga, Gartmore, the bank's fund management arm, is carrying on "business as usual" with all guns blazing.

Whatever happens in the NatWest bid saga, Gartmore, the bank's fund management arm, is carrying on "business as usual" with all guns blazing.

Yesterday Gartmore launched a national poster campaign with the catchy slogan: "Expectmore, Getmore, Gartmore".

Separately, Lewis McNaught , head of retail at Gartmore, roundly condemned press reports that the fund manager's joint chief executives, who had announced their intention to leave in January, were "rejoining the fold".

"This is simply not true," said Mr McNaught. He pointed out that Andrew Brown and David Watts had agreed at the beginning of the year to stay on until Gartmore had recruited a new chief executive.

This may have been the head of Legal & General, David Rough , if the merger had gone through, he says, but since the L&G deal was aborted a week ago the job is vacant once again.

Bearing in mind the uncertainties surrounding the job, I'm sure any applicant should be able to "expect more from Gartmore" - in pay terms at least.

I regret to report the death on Friday of Michael Baring , managing director and head of the corporate institutional finance division at ING Barings.

Mr Baring, one of the last surviving members of the family which built the merchant bank into an international power in the nineteenth century, was 50.

He joined the then family bank in 1970 straight from university. As a senior corporate financier he travelled the world and promoted relationships between ING Barings and other financial institutions. "He was a very nice chap, with a good sense of humour," said one colleague.

He was the senior management figure who would invariably be called on to make speeches at leaving parties, for instance. He was also a prominent figure in the bank when the Nick Leeson loss was first discovered four years ago.

When Barry Warwick began his career thirty years ago, he was selling a revolutionary product - Watneys Red Barrel.

One of the first of the truly national, industrially-produced beers, Red Barrell appeared to be the deathknell of the traditional keg-conditioned pint.

Now Mr Warwick is retiring as founder and chief executive of Old English Inns, a 173-outlet chain of traditional pubs that trade on their appeal to a bygone era.

"The wheel's turned full circle," admits Mr Warwick, 55, who is looking forward to reviving his once respectable golf handicap and getting some fishing in.

The Eastender who came from a family of 18 is being succeeded by another traditionalist - Colin Mayes , managing director of Greene King Pub Company and formerly part of Michael Cannon 's team at The Magic Pub Company. Whatever happened to Watneys Red Barrel anyway?

Tom Turcan has ditched his job as business development director at News International, the European arm of Rupert Murdoch 's News Corporation, in favour of a four-year-old AIM-listed Internet business.

Mr Turcan, 38, has joined Virtual Internet as chief operating officer after a varied career with stints at Gemini Consulting and Capital Radio.

Virtual Internet services the fledgling business-to-business e-commerce sector, and acts as a registrar for web domain names ending in .com, .org and .net.