City Spy: Ofcom vs Elstein in battle of brains

The spat began when Elstein rubbished Ofcom's report into the impact of News Corp's takeover of BSkyB and media plurality. He said some of the regulator's calculations were so flawed that they were "simply made up" - comments that he helpfully aired in The Guardian and also emailed to the great and the good in Westminster, Whitehall, the media and, of course, Ofcom.

Cue a furious response, sent by the Ofcom press office: Elstein had come up with a "fundamentally biased assessment of our report by focusing on just a single statistic"... "Even a cursory reading of our report reveals the range of data on which we based our recommendation and yet this seems to have been disregarded by Mr Elstein". Clearly there is nothing like a regulator scorned.

Elstein has hit back, noting that he made 12 separate criticisms of the regulator's findings. "I did not 'focus on a single issue' (or is twelve now one in Ofcom-land?)".

He adds that some of their calculations still look badly wrong. "There must be someone at Ofcom with O-level Maths capable of working this out. Of course, if there isn't, I withdraw the charge of making it up, and substitute one of incompetence."

More, please.

* Having seen how Colonel Gaddafi treats his people, how do those bankers at Lloyds feel about having illegally helped customers get around American sanctions there? Lloyds agreed to pay a $350 million fine to the US government in 2009 after America's Department of Justice accused it of falsifying wire transfers to banned countries including Libya. It admitted responsibility for criminal conduct

* "I don't do banker-bashing," says Vince Cable in an interview. Eh?

Don't forget the service charge

How the really rich think. City Spy overhears a woman from Kuwait who can easily afford £25 million for an apartment at One Hyde Park, the hyper-luxury flats being promoted by the Candy brothers. "I don't mind the price," she said at the launch party. "But the £70,000-a-year service charge is a bit steep - especially as I'll only ever stay in the place five weeks a year." Well, we all feel your pain.

* "In advance of the Shell Strategy Day, we have built an app which will contain all the key materials we publish on the day." Note to Shell: using the word "app" - and even making one - does not make you cool.

* Chop, chop boys: as the coalition Government has yet to decide on its aviation policy - beyond scrapping Heathrow's new runway - China's top aviation regulator says the country will add more than 45 airports over the next five years, including the four major hubs already in planning...

Forbes ignores Hargreaves

More than 50 reporters in 13 countries worked on compiling our 25th annual World's Billionaires rankings. Throughout the year our reporters meet with the list candidates and their handlers and interview employees, rivals, attorneys and securities analysts. We keep track of their moves: the deals they negotiate, the land they're selling, the paintings they're buying, the causes they give to..." So claim the compilers of the Forbes' annual ranking of world billionaires.
Well, those 50 reporters were not scouring the quoted sector of the London stock market with any great scrutiny.

Where was Peter Hargreaves, for instance, the blunt Lancastrian from the Hargreaves Lansdown financial services group? Where indeed? On February 14, the Forbes valuation date, Hargreaves' stake was worth $1.4 billion, easily enough to get him on the list.

Clearly, the Forbes team of 50 - yes, 50 - could not get their collective heads round checking London share listings.

They're so Eaga to spin

Possibly in a bid to sweeten discontented staff at Eaga, the energy-saving specialist bought by Carillion for £306 million last month, the Eaga trust has hired spinner MHP Communications. The trust - which holds 37% of Eaga shares for the benefit of current and past employees - gave the go-ahead. However, staff are disgruntled about not being consulted. But if they thought the MHP hire would help, it doesn't seem to have done. An Eaga worker complains: "It seems the Trust is now spending massive amounts of cash in the attempt to brainwash partners into believing that they have acted in the best interests of the beneficiaries when clearly the results paint an entirely different picture... Personally I don't think they stand a chance."

* BBC strategy guru Pat Younge and purveyor of management jargon, has been bombarding staff with details of the corporation's new aims - called Delivering Quality First, aka making lots of cuts. Hard-bitten BBC employees don't seem impressed by his sub-business school language.

"I remember Pat Younge when he was an NUJ activist organising a picket line," writes Peter Kendall, a senior technical operator from BBC London, in a letter to staff newspaper Ariel. "He has moved up through the organisation since then and is now the public face of Delivering Quality First. As a former journalist he should be avoiding phrases such (as - sic) 'we could and should do more to transcend silos across the organisation' which appeared in an all-staff email he sent on March 2.

Perhaps those words are comprehensible to a person who has fully embraced the concept of workstreams - but I haven't found that person yet. If DQF is not just about cuts, as Pat claimed in your letters columns last week, perhaps it could be described in plain language."