As Stephen Hester settles into the Fred the Shred memorial chair at Royal Bank of Scotland's headquarters (is he going to keep the palace outside Edinburgh?), the new broom is doubtless in receipt of advice from all quarters.

But one nugget might and possibly should, grab him. Four long-term senior members of the bank's Global Banking & Markets division have written to him to stick the boot firmly in the direction of their bosses. They make the point that their section of the bank was aware of the coming credit crunch yet warnings to their chiefs were ignored — and RBS went ahead and bought ABN Amro.

What is especially galling, they say, is that those who chose to discount what was staring others in the face still sit on the board and the GBM Senior Executive Team. Members of that team have never apologised, and when they leave are receiving huge pay-offs.

* Worse, allege the four in their letter to Hester, some people on the GBM Senior Executive Team are now trying to preserve their positions by running down operations that have been doing well and promoting others that have not. For instance, project finance “has been treated as an afterthought by the [Senior Executive Team] ... and its personnel put to the sword or sidelined by those seeking to further their own agendas.” Sounds as though Hester is going to be busy.

* RBS's latest magazine boasts on its cover: “Special: Every Penny Counts Edition.” Quite.

Going to the dogs at Lehman

City Spy last month recounted the story of Bella, the black labrador that guarded Lehman's headquarters in Manhattan. Speculation abounded about her future after Barclays Capital took over — the fear was that she was facing the axe alongside hundreds of the investment bank's staff. But the rumour was swiftly denied by BarCap, which was keen to stress its canine-friendly credentials. Unfortunately, the upheaval caused by the bank's collapse has not been kind to the bankers' best friend. It seems a Lehman-less world was too much for Bella to bear, and she died last week. But Wall Street website Dealbreaker has tried to make something good come from Bella's demise: it has auctioned off her office pass on eBay for charity. “Lehman Brothers' most valued employee's ID card”, as it is flagged on the auction site, went for $810. Dealbreaker weighed up giving the proceeds to former Lehman workers, but has opted instead to give the money to an animal centre.

* Luke Johnson, serial entrepreneur and chairman of Channel 4, writes in this week's New Statesman: “The Age of Prosperity has been superseded by the Age of Austerity — or possibly the Age of Insolvency. Board meetings have gone from talk of expansion to talk of survival. It is hard to keep morale up in such a shitstorm...

* More Johnson: “I had a recent difficult meeting over a business I part-own, where a director had been claiming for things like his son's mobile phone bills and petrol for his boat in Spain. Somehow, this sort of stuff always bubbles to the surface when times get tough; in a boom, no one seems to notice. We come to a settlement and move on, hoping lessons have been learned.”

* In these troubled times, some folk are prospering. Broadcast magazine reports that hits on the website of ITV astrologer Russell Grant have risen 33% since the start of the stock-market crisis, and he is receiving a record number of requests for personal readings. “When things go wrong, people turn to me for advice,” he says. “As I wrote back in 2007, with Saturn in Virgo, everything has its true worth, and Jupiter in Capricorn won't allow anything to get beyond its real value.”

* Headline from the North-West Evening Mail: “How will Barack Obama's presidency affect Cumbrians?

Brunswick PR man is a poet too

As they while away their time at Brunswick, waiting for their clients to do deals again, how are the spin-meisters of the universe occupying themselves? One answer appears to be: writing love poetry. Agency boss Alan Parker has always prided himself on keeping books of poems in meeting rooms, but now one of the partners has gone a stage further and begun writing the stuff. In last week's Spectator was They Sat Together for a While, penned by David Yelland, a former editor of The Sun. This is an extract:

“They talked. Her eyes were dancing in the space
between them. There were a hundred people near,
maybe more. But somehow the room had slowed, grown black and white.
He wondered if he might kiss her? Just take her in his hands and kiss her. What would she do?
He had always been the shy one. But now a boldness;
An occupying force had come. Something scary,
something wonderful.”

and on it goes. City Spy has to say the verse is rather good — clearly it passed muster with the Speccie's editor. But it does make you wonder: Who is Yelland talking about?

Murdoch's regrets on Obama?

Does Rupert Murdoch now regret backing John McCain? The media mogul reiterated his doubts about Barack Obama, saying this week that he fears the new President will be too protectionist for global business.

But author Michael Wolff, whose semi-authorised biography of Murdoch is published imminently, thinks Rupert should be kicking himself for getting his flagship New York Post tabloid to endorse McCain in September — just before the US financial meltdown that killed off the Republican's chances with voters.

Wolff argues: “What happened is that Murdoch and the Post made a mistake. For Murdoch, it's a galling mistake because he had wanted to endorse Obama. In conversations with Murdoch over the past year, I've been privy to his mounting enthusiasm for Obama — indeed, Murdoch has reflected the enthusiasm of his entire family.”
Wolff blames Murdoch for getting seduced by the initial enthusiasm for Sarah Palin as vice-presidential candidate, and now the election result “makes him look like the one thing he cannot abide looking...old”.

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