Branson's clean fuel headache with Formula 1

Richard Branson has taken up a new hobby in recent months as his Virgin Group has poured millions into sponsoring the Brawn GP Formula One team. However, there was an ulterior motive to his support of the sport as he revealed when his backing was announced last month in Melbourne.

“We have invested quite a considerable sum of money in a company called Gevo,” said Branson, explaining that it has “come up with a fuel for F1, maybe called the Virgin Fuel, that is clean, that doesn't emit any carbon and can perform as well as the dirty fuels that are used in cars to date... Over the next few months, we will be trying to talk to F1 and see if we can have this fuel introduced as the fuel that F1 uses.”

Alas, according to F1's chief executive Bernie Ecclestone, the Virgin boss may need to make a U-turn on this plan. Ecclestone says he doubts that F1's governing body, the FIA, will let Branson have his way because introducing this biofuel “probably means that all the engines would have to be thrown away.” Hardly a green or cost-effective outcome. “It'd be a good idea for him to put it in his aeroplanes for sure,” says Ecclestone, adding that instead of using it in F1, Branson would be better off introducing biofuel to a racing series with vehicles which are more akin to road-cars.

Oh dear - perhaps Branson should have done more homework before plunging into F1.

* Who says insider trading is not what it was? Shares in Axeon doubled in price in anticipation of a Stock Exchange announcement. At the same time, Alexon saw its share price rise from 17.25p to 34p, prior to news of a takeover approach. And that's just two companies from the letter “A”.

Pay inflation? Cairn't believe it

More extraordinary wage inflation among the part-time fat cats who lead our major companies. Private-equity financier Norman Murray, chairman of Cairn Energy, saw his pay at the FTSE 100 explorer soar 43% last year, to £200,000 from £140,000. There is no explanation for the rise for a job that troubles Murray no more than a few days a month.

The increase came after a review by pay consultants Hewitt New Bridge Street. Given this firm advised that all the directors should get pay boosts, a grateful Cairn board was delighted to pay its fee...

* Grounds for a separate dust-up at Cairn's AGM next month is the role of Hamish Grossart, who is Cairn's £105,000-a-year (up 16%) part-time deputy chairman. Some shareholders claim any notion that Grossart can be called an “independent director” is a nonsense — Grossart has been on the Cairn board for 15 years (longer than half the executives) and been deputy chairman since 1996. Cairn says it has “thoroughly reviewed the matter” and concluded “there is no evidence that length of tenure is having an adverse impact on his independence”. A clue, however, to how touchy this is all getting is the fact that Grossart has given up the boardroom role of “senior independent director”.

* Alistair Darling may have promised further “efficiency savings” in his Budget. But what of the BBC with its coverage of the event? It felt the need to include a Budget helicopter so that Jon Sopel could offer a running commentary of Darling's progress by car... all of the few metres from Downing Street to Parliament.

* Andrew Lilico, head of Europe Economics, likens the Government's quantitative easing — pumping money into the economy in order to revive it — to a bottle of ketchup: “If you bang the bottom of the bottle often enough and hard enough, eventually it will shoot out — everywhere.”

Paddy Ashdown records in his newly published autobiography how he shared a Commons office with fellow Liberal MP David Penhaligon, who used to sleep in the office.
Naked and not ready for action

Lord Ashdown had “regular morning meetings with bankers and industrialists who wanted to be helpful. What these captains of industry thought of meetings conducted to the accompaniment of David's stertorous snores from the other side of the office bookcase, while his shirts, socks and underpants hung in festoons around us, they were far too polite to say. I soon learned from bitter experience to avoid meetings before 11.30am. Before this, David could at any moment emerge, bleary-eyed, stubble-chinned and usually naked, but for a skimpy towel round his midriff, and thread his way wordlessly through the assembly on my side of the office, heading for the adjacent gents' lavatory and his morning ablutions.” At least he didn't claim a second homes allowance.

* Who'd be a lawyer? Interviewed in The Lawyer, Jonathan Porteous, corporate, banking and finance partner at Stevens & Bolton, is asked “What's the toughest thing about your job?” Answer: “Having to lie about what I do at parties.”

* Meanwhile, a new book has been published. Aimed at three- to eight-year-olds, My Mommy is a Lawyer “describes what mommy does at work with wonderful pictures and descriptive phrases...”

*Credit Suisse is now the biggest Swiss Bank. Its market cap is Swfr51.2 billion, against UBS's Swfr 40.5 billion.

*How bad is the bloodstock market? Very, if the latest missive from the Coolmore operation
of John Magnier is anything to go by. The stallions usually start their work on 1 February, and in a normal year, the roster of stallions at Coolmore have what is termed a “full book” by now. Anxious mare owners keen to get the best stallions for their mares have usually booked them in months ago. Not this year though — Coolmore is advertising many of its stallions at
knockdown prices and virtually all its stallions are still available.