The annual accounts of Goldman Sachs International, newly published this month, are always worth a read - and not just because they reveal the highest-paid director (probably Richard Gnodde) earned $1.9 million last year, down from $23.4 million in 2007. Much of the filing to Companies House is the same as a year earlier but two paragraphs about "attracting and retaining" employees are notably absent. "Our ability to continue to compete effectively in our businesses will depend upon our ability to attract new employees and retain and motivate our existing employees," the directors of GSI wrote 12 months ago. Translation: That's why we pay staff $23 million-a-year packages. Since then bonuses have been slashed and share options sank under water, so pay is now less of an issue. And if the bank continues to reward a favoured few, it is wise to keep it quiet...

* Goldman is tightening things up too. Here's a revealing new paragraph in the annual accounts, which didn't appear a year earlier, about liquidity risk: “The management has implemented... [a] conservative liability structure — [to] access funding across a diverse range of markets, products and counterparties and emphasise less credit sensitive sources of funding.” Perhaps Warren Buffett, who bought $5 billion of preferred shares last autumn, might count as a “less credit sensitive source”.

* The Square Mile really is battening down the hatches in anticipation of G20 protests. A debate planned for this Wednesday at Innholders' Hall in the City about how bankers “must be motivated and rewarded appropriately” has been cancelled. The organisers, the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, were mindful that a nearby Mercedes showroom had apparently been attacked during a previous anti-capitalist protest and could attract unwanted attention again.

Virgin's green' tax on bills

Virgin Media stands to gain an annual £15 from each customer who ignores a letter sent out this week telling them to switch to “green” e-billing. The company has been inundated with complaints, both due to the attempted rip-off and the fact it has printed the wrong customer account numbers on the letter to activate the change — making it harder to switch in any case.

A hassled company employee tells City Spy's mole that he “can't disagree” that Virgin is trying to get the money by stealth.

* Gotta love this press announcement from the Treasury: “Following a Whitehall-wide competition, the Prime Minister, on the recommendation of the Chancellor, has appointed Tom Scholar as Second Permanent Secretary, International and Finance directorate, HM Treasury.” Given Gordon's own micro-management of economic matters and his closeness to Scholar, City Spy suspects the appointment was made by the PM on the recommendation of the PM. Whitehall watchers are interested as Scholar is replacing John Kingman, who has been seconded as chief executive of UK Financial Investments, the body that is overseeing the bailed-out British banks. Both Kingman and Scholar are protégés of Gordon Brown, born within a year of each other and touching 40. Both would surely expect to be live contenders to succeed Sir Nick Macpherson as Permanent Secretary — numero uno — at the Treasury...

* Alistair Cox, chief executive of recruitment firm Hays, is a kind soul. He moved a management board meeting by a day to allow his group marketing director Sholto Douglas-Home to jet off to Italy to take part in the European Masters Athletics Championships last week.
Douglas-Home, 46-year-old stepson of ex-Tory leader Michael Howard, came a respectable 35th out of 50 in the 60-metre sprint for the over-45s. “It is amazing to see people who are 70 years old pinging over hurdles,” says Douglas-Home. “They are living proof that fitness is an age defier.”

* He's good, that Adrian Montague. No sooner does Gordon Brown's favourite City fixer lose one chairmanship in the French takeover of British Energy than he lands another at privately owned Anglian Water to go with his other three chairs, which include ailing headhunter Michael Page.

Jacqueline sends out bad vibes for BBC's Peston

Ann Summers founder Jacqueline Gold is sending out bad vibes about City hacks. “If I hear the BBC's Robert Peston imply that he has told us so' one more time, without acknowledging that the media, and financial correspondents in particular, have been complicit in the crushing of our customers' confidence, I will be tempted to introduce him personally to some of our more intimate products.” Steady on.

* Jacqueline Gold won't be happy with the Broadcasting Press Guild, which has just given Robert Peston another gong to sit on his crowded mantelpiece. He won the award for “Best TV performer in a non-acting role”. Non-acting? Clearly it would be absurd to suggest this could ever involve being able to repeat the lines occasionally whispered down the phone by high-powered City sources.

Punch in the drink in pub sale

A bit of context in debt-laden Punch Taverns' fire sale of six of London's best pubs — including the Red Lion in Whitehall and the Scarsdale in Kensington — to Fuller's.
Punch owns about 8000 pubs.

Its market capitalisation is a little over £100 million. The six pubs, representing 0.075% of Punch's estate, realised £21 million or the equivalent of about 20% of its market value.

* Capital Pub Company, run by London landlord legends Clive Watson and David Bruce, operates some of the capital's best boozers. And they have just added another, the Bishop in East Dulwich, paying up to £750,000 for a pub whose weekly takings are £25,000. Were they persuaded by this entry about the Bishop on one pubfinder website? “If you like your yummy mummys hot and local, then you will feel right at home here in the afternoons.”

* More awards: CNBC's Money Honey Maria Bartiromo was at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Knightsbridge to host her TV channel's European Business Leaders Awards. Bart Becht, chief executive of Reckitt Benckiser, won the main award while innovator of the year went to Tesco's Sir Terry Leahy. The CNBC panel of judges gave European Business Leader of the Future award to James Murdoch, chairman of BSkyB and boss of all his father Rupert's European media assets. It's an intriguing choice as the Murdochs also own the Fox Business News channel in the States, one of the main rivals to... CNBC.