Pembroke: Looking like furniture

TOM CHANDOS, 40-year-old director of corporate finance at Kleinwort Benson, is leaving after 18 years. Next month he joins Bots & Co, the small merchant bank run by John Bots. Viscount Chandos ('don't put that in, I do my best to conceal it'), is not throwing in his lot completely with Bots, but will work on one media transaction then either join the client concerned, or stay on with Bots.

Why the move? 'There is a point after 18 years when you begin to look like the furniture.' Another reason is that Bots is backed by Allen & Co, run by the much-admired Herbert Allen jnr, who put together numerous deals on Wall Street, including the syndicate that bought Columbia Pictures. 'If I'm going to be a media investment banker, it would be great to do it in connection with Allen,' said Mr Chandos.

BOARDROOM magazine, the glossy business monthly aimed at well- heeled Londoners, has gone belly- up. The title, founded in 1982 and circulated to 90,000 businesses in posh areas such as Mayfair and Knightsbridge, called in the administrators last week and a buyer is being sought. United Communications, the holding company, has agreed to meet the costs of keeping the title going. 'The company did very well during the property boom but since then advertising revenue has been falling and falling,' said Nigel Paul, the joint administrator. He would not disclose the asking price. 'If someone wanted to pay millions for it, I wouldn't want to discourage them.'

GULU LALVANI, the wallet-enhanced chairman of Binatone, the electronics company that specialises in phones and answering machines, has added yet more to his bank balance. Mr Lalvani, 53, who set Alan Sugar on his way by lending him 500 quid in the 1960s, has sold his penthouse pad in Hong Kong for pounds 2.6m, pounds 1m more than he paid for it a year ago.

The buyer is a Chinese businessman who saw the 46th- and 47th-floor apartment featured in a posh property magazine and couldn't resist the view over Hong Kong harbour.

It is the second time the Karachi- born entrepreneur has accepted a too- good-to-refuse offer for one of his homes. Not long ago, he sold his house in Chester Square (next door to Baroness Thatcher), for pounds 2m.

Mr Lalvani, who keeps a suite reserved at the Dorchester for his London visits, is looking for 'a really unique house'.

THEY BELIEVE in catching them early at Arthur Andersen. The accountants and management consultants sponsor the National Young Accountant of the Year Award, where schoolchildren set up and run a small business. This year's winner is Sally Moore, 17, from Loughborough. But unlucky, Arthur Andersen. She wants to be a stockbroker.