There's life after Liffe for Sir Brian and

the fickle finger of fate

or Sir Brian Williamson, the

. coast is clear. He has succeeded

in his long-sustained ambition not to be made chairman of the Stock Exchange, and now he can retire as chairman of Life and spend more time, as he says, over lunch. So ends, in style, as effective a recovery operation as the City can have seen. He was one of the Gang of Four who, twenty years ago, gave London a futures market in money — a chance that the Stock Exchange had preferred to ignore. Liffe turned out to be the modern City's home-grown success story. Sir Brian, its second chairman, always warned that it must not think of itself as an institution, but later on it fell into the trap. Its business fell away, its brightly jacketed traders appeared more ornamental than useful, and its future was sold short. It was at this point that Sir Brian received the City's own fickle-finger-of-fate award. The Governor of the Bank of England sent for him, told him, 'There's something we want you to do for us,' and put him back in as chairman to salvage Liffe — if that could be done. The price of its shares did not flatter his chances. Life was valued at less than £30 million, a bargain that the Stock Exchange felt able to ignore. I found him in his new office, complaining that a team of three had been sent along to see him, one with a name-plate, one with a screwdriver, and one, like Lord Emsworth's butler, Beach, lending a tone. This. so I told him, was what he must have expected to find: too many people, screwing things up.

New Labour, Old City

The incoming chairman slashed costs, waved the traders away from the floor, and put Life's shirt on its new electronic technology, which turned out to be a world-beater. Soon enough he found himself on the receiving end of an auction for Life, with the bids starting at £500 million and the Stock Exchange making the running, Don Cruickshank, its chairman, let it be known that he could talk to New Labour, whereas Sir Brian was Old City — but would be allowed, all the same, to stay on after the merger as deputy chairman. To the surprise of some, Life recommended the rival bid from Euronext of Paris. The news that Mr Cruickshank would be standing down this summer led to repeated tips, denied from the horse's mouth, that Sir Brian would succeed him. In the event, the Stock Exchange has gone for a pupil of the BP school of man agement. Now Sir Brian says that a second stint at Life is enough: 'I came for two years, but they've conned me into five.' He will get along with directorships (HSBC and Euronext are two of them) but it would be a loss if he were to vanish into a non-executive firmament, even if the lunches passed muster. One day the fickle finger will need to point to him again.

Working for Gordon

1 shall be working for the Chancellor until 2 June this year, one day longer than last year. Or until 12 June if you classify his extra borrowing as tax deferred. Or until some more distant date if, like the Bank of England, you discount his cheery expectations. Never mind. On Tax Freedom Day I shall pop a cork (allowing for the extra fourpence he has slapped upon the bottle) and raise my glass to the Adam Smith Institute, whose contribution to the calendar this is. I shall then riffle through the 48 policy decisions listed in the Budget Report, looking for a dividend, in hope but not in expectation. £100 at Christmas for the over-80s? Not for me. £250 for being born after September 2002? Not for me, either. Islamic mortgages. training in prison, favourable tax treatment for retirement parties, tax-free breakfasts on cycle-to

work days. . Tax credits? They are this Chancellor's favourite toys, but by now the System of tax and benefits and credits is so complex that the next Budget must surely introduce a Social Accountancy Advisory Allowance. With this help I might even find that there was something else in it for me.

Other people's business

The Budget Report (price £45 and as thick as a telephone book) is a reminder

that before this Chancellor took over, the Treasury kept itself busy with monetary policy. When all of that was handed over to the Bank of England, the mandarins had to find themselves something else to do. I can now see that they opted for the micro-management of the economy or, to put that in less technical terms, for minding other people's business. They have allowed him to raise public spending from less than £300 billion a year to more than £400 billion, with £500 billion in his sights, and still to spend only a modest proportion of this on taxation's two basic purposes: to keep us safe at home and protect us from our enemies abroad. Now that, we could all feel, would be money spent on us.

Plaice on the bill

One wartime evening, Sir Olaf Hambro, chairman of the family bank, looked in at Wiltons for his solitary dinner and was told that, what with the Luftwaffe and the fishqueues, the two-hundred-year-old restaurant would have to close. He ate in silence, and then said, Put this place on the bill.' Still in family ownership. Wiltons has outlasted Hambros Bank itself, as a kind of cheerful club of well-heeled fish-fanciers with Sir Olafs eldest grandson, Rupert Hambro, as chairman. (Tip: the nursery food is the best, so order the plaice and your credit card will come back in one piece.) Now comes a dynastic shift, with Rupert handing over to his brother Rick and keeping the next generation of Hambros in reserve. So long as they remember to keep his usual table for Sir Brian Williamson, they will do well.

All the eights

Eight is the Chinese lucky number, so HSBC, true to its roots in Hong Kong and Shanghai, has garnished its new head office in Docklands with a lucky new telephone number, ending in 8888. Other members of the Joy Luck Club include Euromoney (779-8888) and Credit Suisse First Boston, luckiest of all: 888-8888. HSBC could have trumped this only by moving even further out of London and signing up for 0208-888-8888. In Barings' Singapore office, Nick Leeson hid his misdeeds in a bogus account invented for the purpose, with the suspiciously lucky number 88888. Lucky for some.