Pembroke: Directors Abroad

WHERE DO you go on your hols when you run one of the biggest package holiday companies in Britain? Not to one of your own sun and sangria destinations, it seems. Directors of Airtours, the travel group, which announced its half-year results yesterday, prefer more exotic climes.

Chairman David Crossland, who looked his usual pale self yesterday, took three weeks in Australia to recharge his batteries after his bid to buy the rival Owners Abroad failed in March.

Harry Coe, finance director, jetted off for a 10-day ski break in Colorado at the same time. Meanwhile, ever-tanned managing director Hugh Collinson held off until June for a fortnight in the Caribbean so he could out-bronze the others at yesterday's results meeting.

ANOTHER little barrier falls in Japan. Reuters, the news agency, was yesterday granted membership of one of Japan's exclusive press clubs. Such clubs are usually off-limits to foreign scribes, who are barred from the whisperings of the government lobby. Reuters has been given the nod for the government's economic planning agency so it will be able to listen in on the authorities' plans for Japan's dastardly trade surplus.

AN UNSEEMLY kerfuffle is breaking out in the usually sombre world of tax books.

August sees the publication of the J Rothschild Assurance Tax Guide (don't fall asleep) penned by one Walter Sinclair. Those of a fiscal persuasion will recall it was Mr Sinclair who, for the past 22 years, penned that worldwide bestseller, the Allied Dunbar Tax Handbook.

Unhappily, the Rothschild tome will not arrive on the bookshelves (specialist section) until August, leaving the field clear for Allied Dunbar's rising star, Tony Foreman, a tax expert of Pannel Kerr Forster. Sir Mark Weinberg, who founded Allied Dunbar before leaving to form J Rothschild Assurance in 1992, is adamant. 'Mr Sinclair approached us.'

ROBIN LEIGH PEMBERTON, Governor of the Bank of England, had his enjoyment of Wimbledon marred yesterday. As he disembarked from his Rolls-Royce, an over-eager policeman urged the Leigh Pemberton chauffeur to move on because of the imminent arival of the Duke of Kent.

The chauffeur promptly glided over the Governor's toe.

'Everybody was laughing but Mr Leigh Pemberton clearly did not see the funny side of the accident,' a security guard said.

To add to the indignity, the Governor, accompanied by his wife Rosemary, was then forced to hobble into the Royal Box to watch the tennis with the Duke.