Treasury's banker
TO have carried his bag for the formidable Kenneth Keith (Lord Keith, nowadays) is as hard a schooling as a merchant banker could have. It should stand John MacGre- gor in good stead as he takes on the spending departments as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. At Hill Samuel, where from Lord Keith's office he moved to the marketing side, he was a sociable, quick- witted figure. More recently he seemed to develop a penchant for insurance brokers, whose trade association often circulated his speeches and comments, always with approval. Now the merchant banker can try his hand in succession to the tax silk. It was Peter Rees's misfortune, and the Treasury's too, that everyone in those beige-washed corridors has assumed for many months that he would not survive the reshuffle. Hence much of the strain on the Chancellor, and the flashes of temper springing from it. If the Treasury now works more smoothly, the City can worry instead about the Department of Trade and Industry, where the two ministers dealing with financial services have both vanished — one to the party chairmanship, one to the wilderness. That is awkwardly timed, with the big Financial Services Bill (City regulation and all that) looming ahead. City leaders who got on well with Norman Tebbit and Alex Faulkner must now offer an uneasy welcome to Leon Brittan and Michael Howard — wonder- ing, as they do so, how far they are going to have to start again.
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