JUST how smart a move is the one-day Marks & Spencer 20% off promotion? Stories abound of customers taking back Christmas gifts they'd bought early, getting a refund and buying them back at 20% cheaper. Others are holding off making their purchases in the expectation M&S will repeat the sale — this Thursday and next are tipped as likely dates. What was particularly depressing, apparently, was the level of returns the day after the previous Thursday sale — from people who got carried away, filled up their baskets, only to think better of it when they got home. At one store in Cheshire, the queue for refunds on the Friday went round the store and took an hour to reach the front.

* THEN there was the sight of pensioners queuing for their 20% off sandwiches. Hardly the sort of trendy image boss Sir Stuart Rose was hoping to achieve...

* TECHNICALLY, if he wants to stick to his 20% off theme, Rose should take account of the VAT cut. Somehow 22.1% off doesn't have the same ring...

* OH dear. The Grocer magazine reports how an M&S PR accidentally sent over a draft release trumpeting the company's cutting of packaging from its Christmas and Easter ranges, as part of its Plan A eco-drive. Unfortunately, there was an author's note saying “Still looks like it has loads of packaging to me!

Wishing on a falling New Star

CITY SPY is feeling fraternal, so won't name the leading national newspaper journalist who wrote the following in a recent edition of Spectator Business magazine, tipping the shares of New Star Asset Management: “True, there are banks that could claim to be more substantial businesses — at least in terms of real estate and market capitalisation — and have also seen 90% knocked off their share prices during the credit crisis.
“But New Star has unit-holders and investors — not borrowers or depositors. So worries about bad debts and where it might find fresh capital, the twin banes of the banking sector, scarcely apply.”
The respected personal finance expert added: “Plenty of bright minds remain among the stock-pickers at New Star and I expect them to shine again when conditions allow. They are vigorously led by John Duffield, who has probably created more millionaires than any other Englishman alive today. If anyone can drive this business through a bad patch, he will.

* THIS from Sydney, where one anglophile Australian executive has this to say on the more-than-doubling of air passenger duty on ultra long-haul flights from the UK. “Yeah, what the f**k?” the outraged executive said in an emailed statement to City Spy. “That's the best part of a thousand Aussie to extricate a family of four from your blighted isles. Which is very bloody steep indeed. Where's this revenue grab going? To prop up a couple of subsistence farms in Brown's home country or appease a bunch of euro-flakes?” City Spy has called in an interpreter..

Bovey's imaginary huge profits

AS recently as six months ago. Mr Anthea Turner — aka Grant Bovey — told the press: “I will sue anyone that says Imagine Homes [his buy-to-let company] is in financial trouble...we have huge profits that have yet to materialise.”
Sadly for Bovey, these profits never have materialised. He's been forced to hand over total control of Imagine to HBOS, leaving him with the humiliating role of “consultant” to the firm. And yesterday it was announced that another of his companies, Imagine Furnishings Ltd, had gone into administration. Imagine Furnishings supplied furnishings for the flats owned by Imagine Homes, and in 2007 it made a loss of £685,259 on turnover of £2.6 million.
In that year, the company paid Anthea Turner £389,410 for “consultancy” services and made advances to her of £240,792. In addition it waived an interest-free loan of £573,738 the company had made to her. “This loan was waived in her capacity as a shareholder”, it said.
It's a long way from the days, not that long ago, when Bovey boasted that his property empire would be worth £1 billion.

How Gordon did U-turn on top rate of tax

GUARDIAN journalist Hugo Young's papers have been posthumously published and include various accounts of his private meetings over the years with politicians including Gordon Brown. Given the recent announcement of a 45% tax rate for high earners, one of the most persistent themes from Brown is how such a policy would be a mistake.
In 1993, Brown told Young: “Labour must cease to be seen as the tax-and-spend party.”
Next year, Brown said it was “vital to get away from the simplistic image of Labour as the party of high, incentive-killing, joy-destroying taxation, it produced very little money, it did nothing for incentives or opportunity, it positioned Labour in its old-fashioned mode”.
In November 1996, Brown told Young that Labour's proposals to increase top-rate income tax in the 1992 election had been “disastrous”.
Once he became Chancellor, the issue still cropped up. At a lunch on 31 May 2001, Brown was asked whether his objection to raising the top rate tax of income tax “was because it would yield too little or that it sent the wrong signals to entrepreneurs, etc?” “Both,” Brown replied.

* HAVING a full-service, traditional carrier like Aer Lingus in the same stable as a no-service airline like Ryanair makes perfect sense, says Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary, as he unveils his £620 million takeover bid for the Aer Lingus. “It's just like a newspaper group where The Times is in the same stable as The Sun,” he says. “And just like The Sun, Ryanair is cheaper, completely outsells the other brand and is way more entertaining.”

* THE Army is looking to profit from the carnage in the City. “We still offer big bonuses,” says a newspaper advert. “Six weeks' paid holiday, free healthcare, a competitive pension and subsidised rent are all part of the package you will receive as an Army Officer. But most of all, you'll have the chance to make a positive impact on the lives of people all over the world. There can be few greater rewards than this.” There must be a few bankers prepared to exchange the Wharf for Helmand...

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