Bunhill: Off sure

FURTHER proof, if needed, of what Professor Gordon Pepper of the City University Business School once described to me succinctly as 'the banks' ability to manage our money but not themselves'.

Before heading off home for the weekend, a foreign exchange dealer at a US investment bank in London transferred pounds 3m into a private offshore account. On the Monday he rang the bank: he would not be returning to work; and he had taken pounds 3m. But he would send back pounds 2m if the bank would leave him be.

The bank said OK. He sent back pounds 2m and settled into the sunset with his million.

I could tell you his name and that of the bank. Although, on second thoughts, if he or the bank want their identities kept secret and would like to get in touch, we could come to some sort of arrangement . . .