Bookmakers, always keen to attract the punters, are hyping this weekend as a £400 million betting bonanza — with the Derby at Epsom, England against Kazakhstan football, the Lions Tour, the Turkish Grand Prix, Twenty20 World Cup Cricket and the opening weekend of Big Brother.

What about political betting with the European election results due in on Sunday and Gordon Brown's future looking more precarious than ever? Betfair's market on when the Labour leader quits has long had the second quarter of next year (i.e. the last time when a general election can take place) as the red-hot favourite for Brown's departure. That has now drifted to around 9/4 against this upcoming summer quarter, July to September, which is now installed as the new 6/4 favourite, having been as long as 10/1 just a few weeks ago. William Hill say Brown is still 8/13 to lead Labour into a general election. Place your bets!

Watch the Ball fly in the Sky

What does BSkyB really think about its former chief executive Tony Ball bidding to run ITV? Sky, the biggest shareholder in ITV with a 17.9% stake, is keeping its counsel. Some conspiracy theorists think Sky's éminence grise Rupert Murdoch wants Ball — who might jack up the ITV share price, before Sky has to sell down its stake on the orders of regulators — but doesn't want to be seen to be pushing his candidacy. And why doesn't ITV seem keen on the idea of Ball in charge? Because he would not be likely to keep much of the top tier of ITV management?
So many questions. If only Tim Allan, the omniscient Portland PR man and Alastair Campbell protégé, had some answers...

* There is plenty of talk about green shoots in the property sector but it has not helped much for staff at London-based consultant Jones Lang LaSalle, who have been asked to take pay cuts of between 5% and 12.5%. “This decision acknowledges that we expect economic conditions to remain very tough over the next six to 12 months,” said Andy Mottram, who is head of the English business and will take a 15% salary cut.

* A word of warning from former Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain. “The real debate is whether the City is celebrating initial signs of recovery too soon,” says the man with the over-exuberant perma-tan.

* Bad news for the older entrepreneur from Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson, who was speaking at Bloomsbury's School of Life: “As I enter middle age, I know that I have fewer fresh ideas than in the past. I now understand that the most fertile period for innovation is prior to middle age. That explains why big companies struggle to innovate. Those who control the levers of power are mostly older, and often feel threatened by youthful up-and-comers.”

But he also says there are big opportunities now. “Institutions are breaking down and old assumptions demolished — from the cosy club of the Houses of Parliament to big banks to dominant national newspapers. This may well become the Age of the Upstart. The established players are probably distracted with legacy problems — debt, or pension deficits or lease obligations — they will not have the resources to react as aggressively to newcomers.”

The sweet taste of success

Everyone loves chocolate, don't they? Banking legend Sir Evelyn de Rothschild is such a fan he is said to indulge several times a day. Now he has put a significant investment into the Richmond pâtisserie of award-winning chocolatier William Curley. “He just walked into the shop one day as a customer, and soon we became business colleagues,” says Curley. Sir Evelyn has become a director of the business and is being joined by his 32-year-old dance music entrepreneur son Anthony. The team is to set up shop in Pimlico Road, a short truffle's roll away from top rivals The Chocolate Society and L'Artisan du Chocolat, in October. Expect the de Rothschilds to drum up business from their Belgravia banking and society contacts.

* More chocolate news: Nicolas Berggruen, the enigmatic character who is pumping £520 million into Hugh Osmond's Pearl group, really likes chocolate cake. It is one of his two daily meals. Other details about Berggruen are scant — he is 47, single and publicity-shy, once buying up and burning every copy of a Dutch magazine that dared to profile him. And he has given up material possessions (apart from the art collection and private jet, but they hardly count). “Possessing things is not that interesting,” he says. “Living in a grand environment to show myself and others that I have wealth has zero appeal. Whatever I own is temporary, since we're only here for a short period of time. It's what we do and produce, it's our actions that will last forever. That's real value.”

* THE smartest aviation analyst in City airspace is Andrew Lobbenberg, who now plies his trade under the banner of Royal Bank of Scotland after that bank's disastrous takeover of his old firm ABN Amro. Lobbenberg, however, is not letting up in his animus towards Ryanair's chief executive Michael O'Leary. In a note this week on the budget airline entitled Crying Wolf, Lobbenberg says you should not believe a word O'Leary is saying, accusing him of deliberately under-promising — being “excessively cautious” — in his profit forecasts for this year. Lobbenberg reckons Ryanair's profits will come in at €484 million against O'Leary's estimate of between €200 million and €300 million. The beauty of this, of course, is that if Lobbenberg proves to be wrong, he can still accuse O'Leary of under-delivering.

* Ryanair's Michael O'Leary might want to have a look at his airline's advertising initiatives. Even the man who will go to any length for publicity probably didn't cook up this plan: Ryanair's Google-run website's adverts are apparently unfiltered. So City Spy visited the Irish airline's booking page this week to be greeted with the promise: “Book your flights now with easyJet and travel from £28.99 inc. taxes!” and “bmibaby: low cost flights — Book now & save!”

* Further to my story yesterday about The Guardian's efforts to rebrand the Hay Festival as the Guardian Hay festival, City Spy wonders whether the Left-wing rag will continue the arrangement in future years. I only ask after historian Andrew Roberts' diary in The Spectator this week. “The Hay-on-Wye Lit fest is safe for Tories again,” writes Roberts. “Once almost the private preserve of the New Labour intelligentsia, this year's festival was full of Conservative MPs, and in the course of my plugging my new book... I bumped into John Whittingdale, Greg Barker, David Davis, Peter Luff and Patrick Mercer. The Festival's organising genius, Peter Florence, says that George Osborne and William Hague were coming down too.” The Guardian may have called yesterday for Gordon Brown to quit but does it like being so cosy with the Tories?