The House Hugh Built
HARRODS USED to have a splendid banking hall, with acres of green leather benches where the better class of customer could rest from her exertions. Punch once drew two of them......
Visible And Audible
THE LORD Mayor of London, Paul Newall, is beating the drum for the export industry all around him. It brings in a net £19 billion a year — and not, as some underbriefed minister......
The Boat Inchcape Rocked
TO LORD Inchcape goes the credit of frustrating what may be the silliest takeover ever seriously meant. This was P & O's bid, 20 years ago, for Bovis the builders, to secure the......
Laying Africa's Ghosts
THE SIX-LEGGED yurt must be extinct in Africa, for the World Bank reports no trace of it. There are ghosts, though. I am sorry about the yurt, which (as you may recall) was......
Lullabank
CREDIT LYONNAIS, France's answer to Barclays, has turned to its shareholder for new capital. Like Air France, it is lucky to belong to a soft-touch government with a deep......
City And Suburban
A feeding frenzy for paying the gas bill — it's just what the Chancellor wants CHRISTOPHER FILDES L ke fish, markets have feeding fren- zies, sudden rushes of money to the head,......