City Spy: Into the lion’s den for Daniel Stewart

Lo and behold, shareholder Adam Wilson has now taken over as chief executive and becomes the biggest shareholder.

City Spy suggested at the time that Andrew Monk, formerly of Blue Oar and Oriel fame, may get involved. He continues to decline to comment so don't rule out a move, possibly in cahoots with new boss Wilson...

Meanwhile, look out for takeover action at Astaire, the stockbroker 60% owned by Evolve, a company run by one Edward "Dr Death" Vandyk and no stranger to this column. In a little-noticed adjunct to its statement last week declaring Astaire was bidding for rival Hoodless Brennan, Vandyk said he was also considering "restructuring" Evolve's stake in Astaire — jargon for "Roll up, place your bids, gents!". This raises two more interesting points. First, Vandyk has to get 75% support from shareholders for an issue of loan notes to fund the Hoodless deal. Spy hears this may be a struggle, given that many investors are less than happy at the prospect. Second, who's going to buy Astaire? The clever money is apparently on Evolution Securities...

Jordan's ballooning assets

Exciting news from Katie Price, aka Jordan. The glamour model, author and reality TV personality runs her own company, Jordan Trading Limited, which has just reported annual accounts to 30 April 2009. Miss K Price, as she is billed, only files "abbreviated" accounts because turnover is below the threshold required to give fuller details but it is clear she is doing pretty well. Cash "at the bank and in hand" leapt to almost £2.1 million from just over £1.1 million a year earlier. However, after liabilities are taken into account, she was only £1.5 million in the black, up from £1.3 million a year earlier. Not a bad result, but given the many business interests from TV series to book deals in the Jordan empire, City Spy suspects Price's wealth extends a lot further. No doubt her former other half, Peter Andre, has got his best lawyers on the case.

BBC man is driving off to spin

Another journalist is making the switch from news to spin: Richard Sambrook, the BBC's departing director of global news, is joining PR firm Edelman as global vice-chairman where he will be in charge of "Global Crisis and Issues practice". Sambrook had his own very personal experience of crisis management when he was director of news at the BBC during the Hutton Report. Curiously, Sambrook has spent his final days at the Beeb putting repeated weblinks about the crisis at Toyota on his personal blog.

His future colleagues at Edelman also seem very preoccupied with the woes of the Japanese car giant ("this tumble was a long time coming," writes an Edelman executive in an opinion piece on its corporate website). Is Edelman, which recently picked up work with food giant Kraft following its controversial Cadbury takeover, angling for some business from Toyota?

Plastic is far from fantastic with Co-op Visa

Is Co-operative Visa the most incompetent credit-card operator in Britain? City Spy only asks after a reader got in contact with a recent tale of woe: "I have been a longstanding Co-op Visa customer. I lost my card so called up to cancel it. Then, as you'd expect, they said they would reissue a new card. But after a week, it hadn't arrived, so I called up to be told it appears to have gone missing between Co-op Visa and the third-party courier company which is supposed to deliver it. Co-op Visa said they'd reissue the card again. Another week goes by but still no card arrives.

"When I speak to Co-op Visa again, they say that I need to call the courier company myself and give me a number. Turns out this number is invalid. So I go back to Co-op and yet another phone operator answers — and offers me three more different numbers for the courier.

"No, I want you to call while I stay on the line,' I say. So Co-op does call the courier firm — only to discover that all three of the new numbers she has offered don't work! She resorted to using Google to find a number. I am still hanging on when the operator finally gets through to learn that, you've guessed it, the courier hasn't received my card. So now Co-op is going to reissue my card a third time. What a farce! Incidentally, I have a good credit history and currently have no outstanding balance on the card."

City Spy would be interested to know if other readers have had similar experiences with Co-op Visa.

... Talking of couriers, customers of City Link should know the Rentokil-owned business is shrinking the number of depots from 85 late last year to around 63 by next year, according to analysts at Bank of America. It is a bid to make the division more profitable...

Good copy in New York Times

Plagiarism alert: the New York Times has issued a mea culpa about one of its business reporters, Zachery Kouwe, who "apparently reused language from The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and other sources without attribution or acknowledgment". The NYT, which says it was only "alerted to the problem by editors at The Wall Street Journal", previously had a nightmare with news reporter Jayson Blair who was found to have heavily borrowed from other newspapers and even made up some information. Blair was subsequently ousted from the paper. The NYT is still investigating Kouwe but says that, unlike in the Blair case, there are no signs yet that his articles were inaccurate. Phew!

Pulling together for the boat race

City grandee Giles Vardey, a former director of the London Stock Exchange, has landed a new job as chairman of the junior market Plus Markets. But friends note that Vardey's all-consuming passion is rowing — or, to be more precise, organising the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. The annual showdown on the Thames is currently sponsored by Xchanging. But City Spy would not be surprised if, in future, it was supported by Plus Markets.