IT will be interesting to see whether Rio Tinto chief executive Tom Albanese is still in his job next year to claim the annual bonus that is de rigueur for top company bosses.

If he is, shareholders may wish to press the remuneration committee on how much Albanese's aborted deal to sell almost a fifth of the company to the Chinese has cost Rio. At the latest estimate, you can add the $195 million break fee on the Chinalco tie-up to the $450 million Rio will be paying in City fees to get its $15 billion blockbuster rights issue away. Should that $645 million be coming off Albanese's basic pay next year?

* Australian drinks group Lion Nathan is withdrawing its Castlemaine XXXX brand, brewed under licence in the UK by Anheuser-Busch InBev, from the British market next year. So let's raise a glass to The Grocer magazine, which couldn't resist this headline: “Castlemaine couldn't give a XXXX about UK.”

* A tieless Bob Geldof was guest of honour among the suits at the Financial Times IFC Sustainable Banking Awards at the Renaissance Chancery Court Hotel. Winners included Holland's Triodos Bank, which was named Sustainable Bank of the Year, just pipping Standard Chartered, and Brazil's Itau Unibanco which claimed the top Emerging Markets prize. FT editor Lionel Barber said: “The financial crisis has necessitated a reassessment of the way in which banks and investment houses operate, and the winners of these awards are radically changing the industry's approach to risk and opportunity.” Translation: That is why no UK banks — with the exception of boutique outfit MicroEnsure — won.

Wired keeps in with the boss

City Spy was taken by a feature in the new issue of Wired magazine on e-readers, those wireless electronic devices that let you read books. The mag shows three different machines, each with a block of text on. But what's this? The third screen has some intriguing, anonymous text. It begins: “Miles Straker, resplendent in his favourite lightweight summer suit and myopically patterned silk tie, stepped outside on to the terrace and surveyed the scene. He took it all in... the perfection of his herbaceous borders, the David Linley garden gate in finest limed oak...”

This honeyed prose doesn't strike City Spy as the most obvious reading matter for a technology geek. But, a literary source tells me, the passage does bear an uncanny resemblance to... the opening paragraphs of the new novel by Nicholas Coleridge, managing director of Condé Nast and publisher of Wired. Well done!

You fancy a pay-off — or a chauffeur?

Didn't Terry Burns do well for himself when he made way as chairman of Marks & Spencer for Sir Stuart Rose last year?

The new M&S annual report reveals Lord Burns got a £350,000 golden goodbye — after trousering £400,000 a year in the chairman's role. Burns' predecessor Paul Myners, who was in the job only two years earlier, collected just £200,000 a year in salary — and no pay-off.

At the time of Burns' exit from M&S, Myners told City Spy he disapproved of a pay-off: “I am sure Terry would set the right tone by declining the payment.” Oh, Lord Burns, you do disappoint.

Myners did extract something from M&S instead of a pay-off — “a driver and fleet vehicle for a period of up to two years”. The cost of that arrangement in just the first eight months was £56,245. A golden chauffeur, you might say...

UBS papers over cracks

Hard times are taking their toll at UBS. After losing tens of billions of dollars in writedowns, then facing a fight with the US government for details of its bank accounts, last week the bank was slapped with a civil complaint by a US regulator for exaggerating the safety of investments underwritten by Lehman Brothers. How will the bank afford the lawsuit? By cutting its costs on, er, lavatory paper. Dealbreaker reports that UBS employees have been complaining that the firm has downgraded to single-ply loo roll. Bosses have also fired off a memo about cutting down on the number of rubbish bins in the office to save a few more pennies.

Word is that Portland PR chief Tim Allan played a key role advising his closest friend (and best man at his wedding) James Purnell over his media-friendly resignation as Pensions Secretary. There's more plotting to be done. One of Allan's mentors, ex-Sky boss Tony Ball, is campaigning to take over ITV...

* Green shoots at British Airways? Hardly. Last month, the number of people flying first or business class fell 17.2% — which is at least better than the 17.7% fall in April.

* Paddy Tipping, who sounds more like an Irish racing pundit than Labour MP for Sherwood, is calling for a maximum wage to “complete the policy circle” that brought in the minimum wage. “So how would we set a maximum wage?” he says. “There is a simple solution. We could say to everybody that no one should receive more than the Prime Minister — £194,000 a year. That is not far-fetched.” Sir Paul Beresford, Tory MP for Mole Valley, responds: “This has to be one of the daftest ideas that I have ever heard in this House, and we specialise in them on occasion.”