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Business diary: Great minds think alike

Monday 03 October 2011 02:11 BST
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Breaking news from Firebox, the gadget company, which is proud to be following in the footsteps of search engine giant Google. The American company announced last week that it is opening an office in "Silicon Roundabout" in East London and Firebox is today saying it will do the same. "The world's greatest retailer" Firebox calls itself in the press release, promptly footnoting the claim "we imagine".

Working off the hamburgers

Best of luck to Paul Bird, who has previously worked as an operations director of Burger King, Berni Inn and Wimpy, as well as having had a stint as managing director at a subsidiary of the UK brewer, Boddingtons. He's got a new self-help book out designed to "help readers and business people master their emotions", which he describes as an "online gym". With that CV, we can't help thinking that he should actually be opening a real gym in order to pay his dues.

Getting the truth from bankers

What is going on at Deutsche Bank? The online gossip site Dealbreaker reports the following sign has gone up in the New York Office: "The Employee Polygraph Protection Act prohibits most private employers from using lie-detector tests either for pre-employment screening or during the course of employment." Is there something they want the staff to own up to?

Relax: lobbyists are engaged

Deloitte's Russell Collins has been appointed chair of the Financial Services Authority's Practitioners Panel. A partner at Deloitte, one of the Big Four accountants who are facing a competition inquiry from Brussels, Collins joins a string of bankers on the group and promises they will all "engage" on the restructuring of financial regulation. We bet they will.

In protesting, timing matters

The Occupy Wall Street campaign is gaining traction in the US, with several thousand protestors effectively shutting down tracts of central New York at the weekend. A British equivalent surely follows and we have some advice: why not choose a day when the markets are actually open if you want to make your voices heard?

businessdiary@independent.co.uk

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