TONGUES are wagging in Australia about the resignation of Brendan Hopkins from the board of Sir Anthony O'Reilly's Independent & News Media, just days after he signed a three-year extension to his contract as chief executive of the Independent's APN News & Media subsidiary Down Under. Hopkins has quit the INM board because the parent company wants to sell its 39% stake in APN — although he insists he knew nothing about the plan for a sell-off until the day before INM announced it. Happily, because Hopkins has just signed that three-year extension, he could receive a much bigger pay-off — up to
A$10 million (£2.5 million) — if he subsequently has to stand down. His previous contract was due to run out in April 2009. A spokesman for Hopkins, who used to run The Independent newspapers in the UK, told The Australian newspaper: “It's standard for CEO contracts to contain termination clauses and Mr Hopkins' contract is no different...the terms of Mr Hopkins' recently extended contract remain unchanged.

Any questions about termination are hypothetical.”

Tosca boss feels under cosh

THE annual report and accounts posted by Toscafund make grim reading. They show that every pound invested by clients this year is now worth just 34p. The performance of Toscafund's core fund dropped by 20% last month alone.

Founder Martin “Rottweiler” Hughes set up Toscafund eight years ago and subsequently built up large stakes in the likes of Manganese Bronze, Lehman, Redrow and Taylor Wimpey. The former star-rated banking analyst has recently complained that Toscafund has been the victim of concerted campaign to drive down the value of its holdings. He is clearly exasperated. Hughes uses the words dysfunctional, illiquid, erratic, incorrect, redemptions and panic to describe the problems faced last month — and that is just in the first sentence of the report.

* WHITEHALL is not normally noted for its plain speaking, but there was no disguising the import of a Parliamentary answer from International Development Minister Ivan Lewis the other day. Asked by Tory MP Keith Simpson how the Government protects the money it gives to Zimbabwe for humanitarian aid, Lewis replied that the funds are placed in offshore accounts. Why? “To prevent pilfering by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.”

Green falls for another Moss

IT'S pretty obvious why Sir Philip Green has gone for Moss Bros. Forget morning suit rentals and Hugo Boss suit sales — PG wants a full-blown retail chain for his star designer. So that will be Kate Moss and Bros then.

* Where did PG come up with the name Warbeck for the private company he is using to take over Moss Bros? Google turns up just two possibilities. There's Perkin Warbeck, an imposter who was a pretender to the English throne during the reign of Henry VII. Or Oscar-winning composer Stephen Warbeck who won his statuette for Shakespeare in Love, but made his name writing the theme for Prime Suspect.

Dinner date dilemma for Dave

Social question: Is Atticus hedge fund boss Nat Rothschild's private dinner for Tory leader David Cameron on 13 January going ahead?

* PROOF of Bank of England Governor Mervyn King's little credibility difficulty? Just months ago, he was regarded as a safe pair of hands, with his no-nonsense approach on “moral hazard”. But things look rather different with the Bank of England making two drastic rate cuts worth 2% in the space of a month and another one-point cut rumoured next month. King and the rest of the monetary policy committee — with the exception of David Blanchflower, who warned about recession and unemployment all year — still look behind the curve. Reporting on the Bank's Inflation Report yesterday, which said price growth could now undershoot the Government target, a Sky News presenter arched an eyebrow and said: “But we know about their predictions in the past...”

* MORE on the Big Brother weirdness that is Discounter House, the name given to the office block set aside by Tesco in which it beats up (sorry, meets) suppliers. The poor souls are sat down in reception in the building and made to watch a video address by Sir Terry Leahy extolling the virtues of doing business with Tesco before they are led off for a little spot of renegotiation of their terms...

It's bad blood and espionage with Russkies

RUSSIA'S Altimo and Norway's Telenor have been slugging it out for the past six months after the two telecoms partners fell out in a legal battle over Ukraine's largest mobile operator. Each has previously accused the other of defamation.

Now Altimo, part of the empire of oligarch Mikhail Fridman, has stepped up a gear, accusing Telenor (which is majority owned by the Norwegian government) of a string of “questionable activities”. These include intercepting emails and telephone calls, surveillance of management and shareholders, black PR campaigns and attempts to disrupt the activities of Altimo's international advisory board.

All good knockabout stuff. Particularly when you look at that board. It includes Lord Hurd, the former Conservative Foreign Secretary, and Sir Julian Horn-Smith, former deputy chief executive of Vodafone, and is chaired by Sir Francis Richards, the former director of GCHQ. What those three don't know about nefarious espionage activities between them probably ain't worth knowing.

* IT may have just celebrated its 40th birthday but there are those in the City who are questioning what, exactly, the Takeover
Panel is doing in these deal-starved times — and more pertinently, whether its staffing level can be justified...

* SPARE a thought, however, for Robert Hingley, the Takeover Panel's director-general. He's on secondment from Lexicon Partners, the corporate finance boutique. You work all your life for one of the top positions the City can bestow, only to find there's nothing to do...

* MOSS Bros chief executive Philip Mountford's acquisition of 100,000 shares in the retailer at 14¾p just a month before a leap in the shares on news of Sir Philip Green's bid is looking most well-timed. Still, while Mountford may turn in a £15,000 profit, his 3.1 million share options in the suit hire chain remain underwater and effectively worthless.

Send us your city spy stories cityspy@standard.co.uk