Sindy Column...

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All Mail

Alex Brummer, the Daily Mail's respected City commentator, tackles Lord Davies' "Women on Boards" report in this morning's paper. He welcomes bringing the "issue to centre stage", identifies excellent female bosses already running public companies and adds: "More the pity, then, that small-minded male board chieftains are so clubby and conservative in their thinking on women directors".
And who are these "clubby and conservative" chieftans? Surely not Brummer's masters at DMGT, the Daily Mail's owner which has no female board representation?

Curse of the award...

Who is the reigning African Leader of the Year? You've guessed it, Muammar Gaddafi. The gong is apparently "a concept designed to promote good governance, transparency in government, popular acceptance and leadership in Africa" while the award organiser reckons: "government should be people-focused and welfare driven". Can the colonel retain his title, I wonder?

Wicked Whisper

Which smooth apologist for a controversial oligarch has just been thrown out of the family home for shagging his wife's mate?

Sindy Column...

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Jacket required

An entertaining exchange at the Baftas, between film journalist Matt Mueller and the eccentric artist and wannabe tax avoider, Tracey Emin. Mueller was on duty, feverishly making notes and at one stage took off his dinner jacket and draped it over the back of his chair. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Emin and her male escort gesticulating vigorously at him from a few seats away. Thinking she was objecting to his note-taking during the ceremony, he pretended to ignore her. But during a lull in proceedings, the artist’s boyfriend approached Mueller and asked if Emin could borrow the dinner jacket. Despite intense heat in the auditorium, Emin was feeling rather cold. When Mueller next looked over, no doubt to check his clothing was being properly treated, he saw that Emin had fallen fast asleep and she stayed that way for the rest of the evening. Where’s an unmade bed when you need one?

Lad-broke

Terrible numbers again at Ladbrokes - where the once lucrative high-roller business seems to have tumbled over a fence. Presumably this means that the Sultan of Brunei (and family) really have closed their account.

Sindy Column...

A disappointing start for Terry Smith's FundSmith. For this week's column, click here.

Inside the insider's inbox

A footnote to the case of Christian Littlewood, the former Shore Capital and Dresdner Kleinwort investment banker who has just been sentenced to three years for insider dealing. “The picture of Christian Littlewood that emerged in court is not quite the full one,” says my man with full access to the prosecution files. “There was some very interesting material on his computer that he wouldn’t want his mother to see.”

Intriguingly, what may shock Littlewood’s mother and fellow insider dealing wife, Angie, barely registers with hardened investigators. “It is not unusual,” says one white collar crime expert. “In fact, it is more unusual not to find something embarrassing when you search a suspect’s hard drive.”

Sindy Column...

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George n Bennett

I see that JJB Sports is mulling a bid for rival JD Sports - which should provoke some interesting discussion between the two former Sunday Telegraph City editors now spinning for the former's PR company Maitland.

Neil Bennett is the hack-turned-mouthpiece with the task of explaining the possible deal to the City, but will he be tempted to canvass the views a Fleet Street successor and his current Maitland colleague, George "Treffers" Trefgarne?

As a journalist, Treffers once described JJB as the "outfitter of choice for couch-potatoes and others who like wearing cheap sportsgear for an athletic afternoon in the shopping mall" - before implying JD specialised in selling its stock to drug dealers. Possibly one for Bennett to handle alone, then.

A small question...

Should Martin Arnold, the FT's private equity correspondent, be writing quite so frequently on Carlyle?