DIARY
NIGEL DEMPSTER Christmas has been made slightly less bleak for the beleaguered underwriting members of Lloyd's, following the six- month moratorium on the payment of huge losses, announced by the chief executive, the motor-biking ex-monk, Peter Middle- ton. But this action, humane as it is, simply sweeps the problem under the carpet and, come next May, Lloyd's will be forced, finally, to move against the estimated 6,000 defaulters who have borne the brunt of the £2.63 billion losses over the last two years. If Middleton and his new chairman David Rowland, salaried — at £450,000 a year — for the first time in the history of Lloyd's, believe that the 6,000 will be busying them- selves over the next months selling assets to meet their debts, they are living in cloud- cuckoo-land. I forecast that the vast majori- ty — who face the brunt of a further pro- jected £2 billion loss in the next two years — will elect for bankruptcy, leaving Lloyd's with uncollectable debts of more than £2 billion, much in excess of their reserve fund. Lloyd's' retiring chairman, David Coleridge, has exhorted the `distressed' Names, who smell incompetence and fraud in the handling of their investment, to pay now and sue later. This they are unable to do financially. Most of the 6,000 were the latest recruits to the market and, having been welcomed to the club, the first letter they received was a demand for payment — now averaging among my friends around £300,000, the highest at £1.3 million. Many of them feel they were shamelessly 'trawled' by members' agents (who are paid commission) in the mid-Eighties to become investors and that they were cannon-fodder for the vast damages that are now being awarded in the United States courts for asbestosis and pollution claims. Now there appears to be solid evidence for this belief; Earl Alexander of Tunis, one of the hardest hit of the Lloyd's Names, has uncovered evidence in New York that as long ago as 1979 a delegation of working members of Lloyd's (as against the outside Names who simply put their fortunes on the line) was warned that there would be an irresistible surge of litigation in the US Courts, and that they should start quickly recruiting new investors to help pay for the vast dam- ages projected. Echoing the immortal phrase of Tiny Rowland when he saw off the predator Alan Bond, Lloyd's of London now appears to many observers to be `tech- nically insolvent'.
There has been a marked decrease in Christmas parties, but the munificent Lord Archer made up for some of the dearth by hosting three on successive nights this week at his South Bank penthouse, juggling the
lists so that the top Tory brass were evenly spread over the evenings. Luckily my invita- tion to sip Krug and eat shepherd's pie did not clash with that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's, as Norman Lamont feels that I am responsible for Fleet Street's continu- ing incursions into his private life. In the summer of 1985 I revealed that Lamont, then Trade and Industry Minister, was explaining to inquirers in the House that the black eye he was covering with dark glasses was the result of a collision with office furniture. In fact, he had been assaulted in a quiet Bayswater mews by a jealous West End art dealer, who arrived late at night at the home of his girlfriend, Lord Forte's attractive widowed daughter Countess Olga Polizzi, to find the Minister making an unscheduled visit. The story made headlines in most of the newspapers, but did not prevent Lamont receiving a promotion in the next government reshuf- fle. That Christmas, I was at the annual bash given at Claridge's by the late Vis- countess Rothermere, when she took my arm and said there was someone she want- ed me to meet. Delivering me triumphantly into the presence of Lamont, she effected the introduction. 'I didn't believe you actu- ally existed,' wailed the future Chancellor, which may explain his rather naïve subse- quent dealings with the press.
juice, please, and make it a double.' 'An orange
cheduled for Monday this week, my dramatic debut as a defendant in a High Court libel action after nearly 30 years in Fleet Street was aborted at the 11th hour when the plaintiff, an Italian called Prince Mario Ruspoli, withdrew the £1,001 we had paid into court for commercial reasons, and thus did not proceed with the action. Rus- poli, who described himself as a 'prince' and an 'investor', was represented by Peter Carter-Ruck and Partners, having original- ly employed another firm of lawyers, and it has been reported to me that he has been claiming that his own costs of the action, which he began more than two years ago, were in the region of £150,000 — possibly an exaggeration, as the estimate for the whole court hearing, had it proceeded, was in that region. One down and one to go. I am being sued for breach of copyright by the formidable Miss Sara Keays (this time I am represented by Peter Carter-Ruck and Partners), and a measure of the case is that it will be heard in a county court rather than the High Court. It concerns a book I wrote for Lord Weidenfeld. One of the photographs in it, purchased in good faith through an agent, is the copyright of Miss Keays and the subject of the litigation, although when approached by Miss Keays's lawyers in 1991, I explained that I had no involvement in the matter. They chose not to believe me, since when the costs for the three parties involved are now in the region of £40,000, and this sum will be further increased when the case comes to trial. Yet again the cost of resolving a dispute through legal channels appears totally at variance with the actual sum in dispute. Publishers, for instance, pay nominal sums for photographs used in books, usually between £30 and £150.
hen the Princess of Wales comes to negotiating a financial settlement in prepa- ration for her divorce from the Prince, I trust she will be treated more generously than the Duchess of York, whose advisers have been negotiating with the Queen's solicitors, Farrer & Co, since her separa- tion became official nearly nine months ago. Following the Queen's decision to pay taxes, estimates of the wealth of the royal family have been revised downwards from the truly ludicrous £6.7 billion in Fortune magazine to a comparatively modest £50 million — and even that may be an exag- geration. When the Duchess sought details of her estranged husband's wealth — rumours have abounded for years that the Queen gave Andrew fl million on his birth, which now would have grown to around £30 million — she was informed that he had no capital and his only asset was a life insurance policy.
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