* WE'VE been here before. PricewaterhouseCoopers has been attacked by the Financial Reporting Council because it encourages certain partners on client audits to cross-sell other services of the firm.
It's against the ethical standards of the profession, which state that a firm should “ensure that, in relation to each audit client, no specific element of the remuneration of a member of the audit team is based on his or her success in selling non-audit services to the audit client”.
Those whose memories stretch back to the last recession will recall PwC's predecessor firm, Price Waterhouse, was caught in 1991 using the audit as a loss-leader, offering a 40% cut in the audit fee to capture Prudential as a client — one it could then hit with their other earners. The revelations caused such a stink that it took several years for the firm to shake off the tag Cut-Price Waterhouse...

* JUST how successful is the marriage of Lehman's famed aggressive trading operation with the more cautious Nomura going to be? Tales abound of dealers twiddling their thumbs while the new bosses make up their minds on trades which at Lehman would have sailed straight through.

* TOUGH times for the workers at earthmoving equipment giant JCB. More than 2500 of them have agreed to be paid about £50 a week less to keep their jobs — a move that reduced the number of proposed redundancies from 500 to 178. Has their sacrifice been reciprocated by the owners, the wealthy Bamford family? Hard to tell, as for some reason the Bamfords like to keep their financial affairs private and offshore. Their main UK company is owned by Transmissions and Engineering Services BV of the Netherlands. Even Daylesford Organic Farms, the high-profile, right-on, foodie sideline of Carole, Lady Bamford, is incorporated in that well-known Western gastronomic haven of Liberia.

* WEIRD claims received by AA Insurance this year included one from a Mr Fairclough, who said a car approached in the opposite direction with a large Christmas tree badly tied to the roof. “He was driving too fast and I saw the tree lift off and it flew straight at me. The trunk made a great dent in my bonnet and caused me to run off the road and into a hedge.” Mr F added: “The chap didn't stop and he never came back for his tree.”
The tale is not dissimilar to Mr Carlton's, who reported he was driving home from the pub with a friend and passing under the bypass, a sheep landed on the bonnet of his car. “It had come from a lorry that had overturned on the bypass and in fright it jumped over the parapet.” The car was a write-off. Mr Carlton didn't say what happened to the sheep...
Then there was Miss Pownall,
a nurse. She was on her way to work when a magpie flew in front of her. Remembering the saying about magpies — “one for sorrow, two for joy” — she said she was looking out for the second and promptly ran into the back of the car in front.