OUT-OF-WORK New York bankers who can't face socialising with people who still have jobs are invited to the first-ever Wall Street Pink Slip Party, being thrown tomorrow. The parties, which allow recently sacked workers to drown their sorrows together, first proved popular with IT specialists during the dot-com crash.

Those adjusting to life without free-flowing Krug will be able to take some comfort in the cheap booze on offer, and if getting drunk isn't enough, recruiters will be there to scout for talent.Given that where New York goes, London usually follows, how long before Square Mile P45 parties are on the cards?

* STUDENTS rushing to sign up to the credit-crunch-defying law firms may have received a shock. In a bid to recruit Cambridge talent at a university law fair, legal giant CMS Cameron McKenna handed out — wait for it — travel adaptors. A few days later, the attendees received an email, warning them the adaptors are dangerous...

Barack picks a tough guy

BARACK Obama is playing tough with the appointment of his chief of staff — Rahm “Rahmbo” Emanuel, a hard political operative who knows his way around Congress and the business world.
Emanuel has sat on the Senate banking committee and served as a director of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, troubled US mortgage lender Freddie Mac and PR firm BSMG Worldwide.
Fellow politico Paul Begala once described Emanuel's leadership style as a cross between “a haemorrhoid and a toothache”.

* JACK Shafer of online US magazine Slate says: “Rahm Emanuel loves the press on many levels. He loves leaking to them, manipulating them, packaging stories for them, and recycling crap to them. Reporters say Rahm is smart, but complain he has a bad habit of peddling shop-worn goods as scoops.”

Going postal over Lloyds gaffe

ERIC Daniels, you should be ashamed. Post offices are full of your HBOS offer documents and proxy forms, sent out to shareholders. The reason? Lloyds TSB forgot to put stamps on the envelopes sending the inch-thick missives. City Spy's man in Hampstead tells us he received a card from his local postie, telling him he had a package to pick up that was insufficiently stamped. If he wanted it, he must pay £2.44.

“I only paid up because it was my birthday last week and I thought it might be some marvellous present,” he sighs.

* WARM greetings to Peter Vanderpump, an Isle of Man solicitor. He has just become a non-executive director of Trading Emissions Plc (no sniggering at the back, please). The former partner of Deloitte Touche's Isle of Man operations lists nine further current directorships and a staggering 259 other ones over the past five years. Fortunately for Vanderpump, one of those was for Stamina Ltd. He obviously needed it.

* THE word in the motor industry is that Ferrari sold just one of its upmarket, high-performance cars during October. City Spy hears this single machine was sold at cost to the lucky buyer in order to get it off the books.

* A business that is doing well: a leading physiotherapy practice reports a surge in City clients with back, neck and other physical strains in the last three months. Stress is
on the rise.

Debs' delight has had enough

INTRIGUING departure of Angela Spindler as managing director of Debenhams. Spindler was brought in less than 10 months ago from George at Asda, where she had signed Mrs Wayne Rooney, Coleen McLoughlin and introduced the £10 school uniform. Word is that Spindler had been promised the Debs chief executive job by 1 November. But the beleaguered Rob Templeman, who brought the business to market after it had been raped by private equity, decided to stay through the financial crisis. Spindler said: “My ability to continue to add value within an expanded remit has become impossible.” Eh?

Mining firm is flying into turbulence

HOW troubled is Phil Edmonds' London-listed African miner Camec? Its shares are trading at just 10% of their value five months ago after the bursting of the commodities bubble and more recently unrest in Congo, where the former England cricketer has serious interests.

Now it has emerged the company is trying to refinance up to $12 million (£7.6 million) on its two Falcon corporate jets. The planes, one 20 years old and the other manufactured in 1978, are bought and paid for and, despite their vintage and the fact they've been hauled up and down Africa, still have a market value of up to $13 million.

But according to City Spy's man with the joystick, their attempt to effectively raise a mortgage on them has so far been joyless.
“No one is touching them with a barge pole,” he says.

* UNICREDIT Group — Credito Italiano before it bought up German group HVB — moved from 17 Moorgate (where it had been for decades) to a rather impressive glass building further up, towards Bishopsgate, last year. Now the ground floor of the old premises — which has undergone serious refurbishment — is to be turned into a Starbucks.

* FOR reasons best-known to itself, in 2006 Deutsche Bank decided to buy Sutton & East Surrey Water for £190 million from Guy Hands. Two years later, the company has gone cap in hand to Ofwat, demanding an increase of 10% over inflation on the bills it sends out next year to households in the boroughs of Sutton, Merton and Croydon and parts of the stockbroker belt. That would have meant a rise of up to £20 a year when the water regulator had previously demanded a limit on charges increases next year of less than the rate of inflation. Instead, the new get-tough Ofwat has turned the company down flat. Ofwat chief Regina Finn says she is unconvinced the company does not have the wherewithal to deal with falling revenues and rising costs.

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