Pembroke: Physician, heal thyself - the rest, beware

In a move that will send a fair ripple through the world of redundancy counselling, Pauline Hyde, the doyenne of the outplacement business, has confirmed her comeback with a rival company. The announcement comes just three months after Ms Hyde was ousted from Pauline Hyde Associates, the company she founded, in a management reshuffle in August.

Ms Hyde, who is thought to be over 70, will be chairwoman of Lee Hecht Harrison, an American redundancy counselling organisation that is setting up offices in London.

'Retirement does not become me,' says Ms Hyde. 'I miss business, and having been made redundant myself I feel I have more to offer.'

Ms Hyde's return will provoke some controversy in the sector. She set up Pauline Hyde Associates in 1978, before selling it to Scottish Television for pounds 6.8m in 1988. She retired from her position as chief executive in March 1992 but stayed on as a non-exec. Then, in a sudden reaction to disappointing results, Scottish TV replaced virtually the entire management team in August, including the founder.

Ms Hyde's return poses several problems for her former company. It might get tricky trading as Pauline Hyde Associates when the real person is working for someone else.

And a freshly motivated Ms Hyde, who has brought several members of her old team with her, will be gunning for the same clients her old company needs to keep.

Scottish TV says it has no plans to change the name and is not worried about losing clients.

Pauline Hyde was avoiding the word 'revenge' yesterday, but said: 'I want to support the people who were fired for what I thought to be no good reason.'

Outplacement has never been so interesting.

Graham Webb, speaking for the Hairdressers Employers Association at the CBI conference in Harrogate yesterday, was more apposite than he might have known. 'I stand before you as a barber,' he said. 'A specialist in cutting waste and trimming overheads.'

Mr Webb was speaking on a day when the CBI slogan was 'doing business at the cutting edge'.

Rymans, the stationer, is celebrating its centenary at the Park Lane Hotel in London next month and has sent out invitations together with details of what was going on back in 1893.

A butler earned pounds 100 a year, the Times cost 3d (no change there) and income tax was 3.5p in the pound.

Also that year, James Keir Hardy founded the Independent Labour Party, Gladstone's second Irish Home Rule Bill was passed by the House of Commons and rejected in the Lords. And Wolverhampton Wanderers won the FA Cup.

The international federation of the phonographic industry has intercepted 264,000 pirated Elvis Presley CDs, Movie Hits 1, and destroyed the lot. Whether anyone would have paid money for them is another matter.

NatWest markets is obviously very keen to get its Lloyd's investment trust away. As the offer period of its Angerstein Underwriting Trust draws to a close, it has dredged up someone who thinks he is the great great great great nephew of John Julius Angerstein, chairman of Lloyd's in the late eighteenth century and the inspiration for the trust's name.

Step forward Joachim Angerstein, who is currently working at Coutts & Co where he is on secondment from a bank in Germany.

The Angerstein scion is now dutifully sorting through letters his ancestral relative wrote to Lord Nelson about a fund to help dependents of seamen killed in battle.

(Photograph omitted)