After being told last week that they will not receive their regular share of the firm's profits for the next six months, partners at City law firm Eversheds seem desperate to hold on to their perks.

According to Roll on Friday, the law trade's website, urgent talks were held over whether to continue their free Friday lunch. In an email sent round to the firm's top dogs, one partner revealed that the verdict had been pretty much unanimously in favour of keeping it.

Although, in a sign of the times, he added: “I do think it behoves us to embrace modesty in our lunchtime choices,” meaning apparently pudding and wine are off the menu.

Given that the firm admitted last month that 33 associates in its real-estate division are in danger of being laid off and free breakfasts have been ditched, how generous of the partners to forgo their apple pie and ice cream.

* Carlos Slim, the Mexican investor who vies with Warren Buffett for the title of the world's richest man, is not yet following the Sage of Omaha's lead and buying up distressed stocks.

Buffett has said publicly in recent days that the time is now right to buy United States shares but Slim intimates he felt there is still worse to come. He said in a US television interview that he's worried that what had so far been a crisis that was affecting the global financial economy would spread and pummel the economy as a whole.

Slim, who made his first fortune buying cheap assets when Mexico was in turmoil in 1982, said it may be two years before he is tempted to purchase shares. Meantime, he thinks the world's governments are taking too much time to sort out the problems.

Surprise as go-it-alone banks fail to win praise from press

Three UK banks are being partially nationalised — and two aren't.

HSBC convinced the Financial Services Authority it could bolster its balance sheet from its own resources while Barclays' Roger Jenkins — one of the top dogs at BarCap — trawled the world for another few billion of sovereign wealth money.

You'd think both or either bank might win plaudits from the capitalist free press. Instead, there's some bemusement in their respective Canary Wharf towers that the biggest fans of bank nationalisation appear to be none other than the Financial Times and Breakingviews.

* The festive season always sees a rise in moans about shops selling rubbish, but one online retailer is doing just that. Boys' stuff specialist Boffer.co.uk is marketing a “bag of c**p” for £1.99. The company says the opportunity to buy a brown bag filled with up to three items it could not sell has “been described as the worst deal ever”. Despite the fact it has sold 4000 of the rubbish bags in 48 hours, City Spy has to agree.

* So the US Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates to 1% to deal with the fallout from the bursting of the housing bubble. The main cause of the housing bubble? Er, the Fed slashing interest rates to 1% the last time around...

Three men who really do count at BT

How many accountants does it take to connect a computer? Well, if you are BT, the answer is a lot. In the wake of its disastrous profit warning based on the poor performance and particularly the poor cost efficiency of its Global Services division, it ousted the business's chief executive François Barrault and replaced him with the group's finance director Hanif Lalani.

So Lalani will be charge of the division which connects giant corporations' and governments' phone and IT systems together across the world.

He will report directly to Ian Livingston (pictured), the relatively new chief executive of BT who was, of course, previously finance director of BT and before that Dixons. Livingston reports to the chairman of BT, who is none other than Mike Rake (Sir Michael to you), who was for ages senior partner of accountancy giant KPMG. Surely, between the three of them they should be able to make sure the pennies no longer go astray.

* Open all hours, alert to every nuance from the world of finance, City Spy brings you the strange circumstance of Zurich's local banks, “drowning” in money thrust at them by depositors
who are running quickly away from the uncertainties surrounding the future of UBS
and Credit Suisse.

According to the authoritative newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, the safest bank of all, judging by its interest rates, is the state-owned Postfinance, which pays a stingy 0.85% for 12-month term deposits.

In May, you could have got 2.33%, a decent rate by Swiss standards. On the other hand, UBS is still paying 2.72% and Credit Suisse 2.67%.

Nat Rothschild and the £30m buy that never was

How fascinating it could have been if Nat Rothschild had gone through with his interest in buying the corporate investigations firm, Diligence (European boss, one Michael Howard).

His investment company JNR was close to purchasing Diligence for about £30 million last year. Diligence attracted controversy for its claimed involvement in the illegal obtaining of information from the Bahamas branch of KPMG.

In this unsavoury saga, it was alleged that Nick Day, an ex-MI5 officer and operations head of Diligence, had impersonated a serving MI5 officer in order to infiltrate KPMG. Day denied the claim, but Diligence paid KPMG $1.7 million (£1 million) to stop the case coming to court.

Diligence had been working for Russian conglomerate Alfa in its battle with rival firm IPOC.

* Regular radio listeners might feel some relief in the news that cruise company Carnival UK is to dump its Ocean Village brand. The two ships under the marque were supposed to attract younger cruisers, via an advertisement campaign on commercial radio promising cruises “for people who don't do cruises”. Now the news that Carnival UK is phasing out Ocean Village will put an end to that oft-repeated ad, since it turns out that people who don't do cruises really don't do cruises.

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