Column Eight: Less than gentle comments

One Terence Roger Hewett, a Lloyd's broker, has been put up for membership of the Savile, a gentleman's club in Mayfair. Next to his nomination in the members' book is the space inviting comments from existing members; the Savile custom, judging from all previous pages, is to leave this tactfully blank.

But this nomination has provoked a textual reaction - from a disgruntled Lloyd's member, one assumes. 'What's in a Name?' has been scrawled across the page, together with a large inked arrow pointing to the prospective Savilian's occupation. There was another very rude comment, we are told. Irritatingly, this has been scrubbed out.

From Russia comes the news that Yuri Shafranik, the energy minister, has taken out insurance against being sacked. If he is, the insurance company Germes-Polis will pay one million roubles - not much more than pounds 1,000, but the equivalent of a year's salary. 'As a gesture of support for his free-market hopes,' the company is not charging a premium. Can you imagine the Prudential doing the same for our Mr Lamont?

If Don McCrickard, former chief executive of TSB Group, is using his retirement to write a book about the Far East, as rumour has it, he won't be depending on a miserly advance. According to TSB's accounts published yesterday, his payout after his sudden resignation in August was a handsome pounds 763,432, higher even than the word-on- the-street had it at the time.

The highest-paid director was the new chief exec, Peter Ellwood, who received pounds 373,407 in 1992, a 24 per cent increase on his 1991 salary.

Although Terry Smith may have inadvertently given a different impression, accountants are by nature cautious folk. Witness Financial Reporting 1992-93, the decidedly un- effervescent 24th annual survey of UK reporting practice published yesterday.

The weighty tome notes that the Accounting Standards Board has, in its first two years, 'skirted around the edges of the major accounting issues'. 'It could be that the ASB is testing the water before its all-out assault on UK financial reporting practice,' it adds, ever non-committal.

Does anything surprise you any more about pensions? The National Association of Pension Funds has found it necessary to issue a code of practice on fees, apparently because too many fund managers wait until clients sign up before adding extra charges.