Just how brilliant is the track record of John McFarlane, favourite to be the new chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland? As head of Citibank UK, he was architect of the grandiose, immensely costly and embarrassing failure of the US bank's foray into the equities business when he bought City second-liners Scrimgeour, Kemp-Gee and Vickers Da Costa, paying off the partners handsomely, and creating Citicorp Scrimgeour Vickers.

Despite protests from other parts of Citi that he was throwing away their profits (which he was) he hired a plethora of stockbroking analyst and sales “talent”, while rivals Credit Suisse First Boston, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were building up a huge presence and profits in London's eurobond market instead, which would have been a natural for Citi.

After two years of losses, the business was closed.

* When he took over as head of ANZ, McFarlane said his strategy was to “de-risk” the bank. Hmmm. He quit in August last year, just before the bank revealed writedowns of $1.4 billion. He also took the decision to back Opes Prime, the broker that went into administration earlier this year...

* City Spy's glass half full award goes to...Peter Cox, chief executive of Tesco Clubcards maker ID Data which yesterday announced it had run out of cash and was calling in the administrators. “Administration is not necessarily a sign of bad news,” he claimed. Of course it isn't, Peter.

Roman can't be so generous

Times are tough, even for Roman Abramovich. Belgravia locals had taken to dropping begging letters through his letterbox for worthy and charitable causes. His generosity could not be faulted and at least one local schoool was a recipient of the Russian's largesse.
This year though, by return, came not a cheque but a signed copy of his autobiography.

* It's a nasty old world. Spotted in Old Park Lane: some time Manchester City and Thailand boss Thaksin Shinawatra's monster Rolls-Royce...with its passenger window smashed in.

* Now everyone in the City is wearing sackcloth and ashes, it is tempting to recall those halcyon days not so long ago when no-one seemed to worry about very much. Martin van der Weyer, business editor of The Spectator, recalls in this week's issue one splendid meal in 2005: “I lunched in the private restaurant at the top of the Gherkin, the London headquarters of the Swiss Re insurance group, with three masters of the money universe, traders of 30 years' experience apiece. This credit derivatives market is getting out of hand, they agreed cheerfully as we savoured the recommendation of Swiss Re's sommelier: no one knows how much paper has been issued, or who's holding it, or what it's really worth; fortunes are being made trading it, but one day it will blow up in our faces. That was three and a half years ago. I thought little more about it until last week. It was a huge story and I missed it. But then so did Swiss Re: the Gherkin was sold last year for £630 million, but that sum covered less than half of Swiss Re's losses so far on credit default swaps.”

Call me Bad Boy', City's Becks tells his Posh

Crispin Odey is already known as one half of the City's Poshn'Becks — his wife, the Barclays heiress and JO Hambro director Nichola Pease being the Posh. But he appears to be attempting to gain another moniker. His latest letter to Odey Asset Management investors revels in the fact he is called “The Bad Boy” after being outed as a shorter of London's wretched banking sector.

* Ah the perils of corporate sponsorship. Shell is supporting the National Theatre and its new production of Oedipus, starring Ralph Fiennes. Alas, at this week's opening night, protestors gathered outside and handed out leaflets to theatregoers, demanding “an end to oil sponsorship of the arts” and featuring a diagram of a little man shooting himself in the head with a petrol pump.

* Nordic customer and foreign embassy employee to bank teller at the HSBC branch in Sloane Square: “We have no worries. We have transferred all our embassy funds to you, to HSBC. They are no longer in our bank!” There are two embassies on Sloane Street and one of them is the Icelandic Embassy...

Plus ça change with Labour

A Labour government bailing out City fat cats is not new. Here is Bernard Donoughue, James Callaghan's adviser in Downing Street, in his Diary entry for 21 June 1977: “A note came in this morning that the City firm Slater Walker is going bankrupt tomorrow. But the Bank of England is going to put in £3.5 million of public money to rescue it (for the second time!) in order to save embarrassing the Bank and the City. This infuriated me. These Bank people go round pontificating about lame ducks and opposing any rescue of manufacturing firms in trouble, where thousands of jobs are at stake. But when it comes to their own shady financial empires they take the taxpayers' money to bail out every crook and cheapjack in the City.”

* Unfortunate timing for Oxford University's mail-out requesting former students stump up cash. The letter landed on the same day Oxford admitted it has around £30 million frozen in the Icelandic banks.

* Rumours persist in US military circles that the Kremlin wants to stick an airbase in Iceland in return for its €4 billion bailout loan. Iceland denies it, of course, saying there are no strings attached. The US moved out of the Keflavik airbase two years ago. Even if the Kremlin doesn't get any favours for its military, diplomats are twitchy about the political implications of Europe turning her back on a former Nato ally. The Kremlin's sphere of influence near the oil-rich Arctic widens...

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