Letter: Credit this?

HELEN KAY'S Inside Story ('Fortune tellers to a few', Business, 7 August) of Coutts Bank, evoked memories of the Sixties when it was the banker of the International Publishing Corporation (the pre-Maxwell Mirror Group). Coutts offered free banking facilities to all IPC's employees in London, most of whom were life-long, card-carrying socialists.

Our shame at sharing a bank with the Queen was quite short-lived: the expense of providing lovely leather cheque books and detailed statements for umpteen customers with balances of around a fiver cut deeply into the bank's profits.

It was n ice while it lasted, but the loss, in mid-career, of such a pleasant 'perk' was as nothing compared with what was in store for my mates at the Mirror in the twilight of their lives.

Ken Taylor

Brighton