Barclays Capital boss Bob Diamond's mission to take over America continues, following the purchase of the US arm of Lehman Brothers and his move from London back to his native land. Diamond has spent $4 million to buy the "naming rights" to a New York subway station.

Curiously this train stop, which will now be known by the pithy name of Atlantic Avenue-Pacific Street-Barclays Centre, is not in the heart of Wall Street but across the river in suburban Brooklyn. It is part of a wider deal as the bank has also bought the rights to the nearby 18,000-capacity sports stadium, to be called the Barclays Centre, for $300 million. Doubtless the bank's staff back in the UK are thrilled and don't feel this is a waste of money when Barclays is shutting its final-salary pension scheme to 18,000 staff to save cash.

Barclays' investment in renaming the sports stadium could yet look shrewd. Office supply chain Staples did a similar deal in Los Angeles, where it sponsors the Staples Centre, the venue for the Michael Jackson memorial concert on Tuesday. According to the Boston Herald, Staples has received more than 2300 hits in newspaper and wire reports and 18,350 verbal and visual mentions on TV in the aftermath of Jacko's death. If that's the sort of brand exposure a company wants...

To be Frank, Lynne loses out in name check

Spare a thought for Lynne Frank, TV boss of ESPN in the UK, who has just spent the best part of £240 million buying up live Premiership football rights for her soon-to-be-launched successor to ill-fated Setanta. Frank, a well-groomed fortysomething American who has lived here for 15 years, has a remarkably similar name to another better-known media figure — public relations woman Lynne Franks, famed as the inspiration for the chaotic Jennifer Saunders “Edina” character in Absolutely Fabulous.

So ESPN could be forgiven for feeling peeved that journalists keep mistakenly referring to Frank as “Franks”. Ms Frank managed to bite her tongue when yesterday's Today Programme, which interviewed her, made the blunder several times.

Hogg may end in deep water

Baroness Hogg, chairman of under-pressure private-equity firm 3i, has recruited two new heavyweight non-executive directors, Hays chief executive Alistair Cox and new DSG International chairman John Allan. City Spy hopes Sarah Hogg is lining up a new job for herself as she is stepping down as £290,000-a-year chairman next year. Since her Tory MP husband Douglas is not standing at the next election, who will pay to clean the Hoggs' moat?

* WHAT's more boring, life insurance or accountancy? James Pearce, the insurance dude at JPMorgan Cazenove, isn't sure, but at least he isn't in denial about his subject, and therefore presumably, much of his life. His note yesterday on Prudential begins: “Accounting is not a subject of choice for the casual reader, and neither is life insurance. A note on life insurance accounting potentially compounds the difficulties.” City Spy tried to read the rest, but fell asleep.

* Sign of the times: in a response to a rise in shoplifting during the recession as people become desperate to feed themselves, Tesco is putting security tags on packets of, er, cheese. According to International Supermarket News (yes, really), the UK's biggest retailer is putting the tags — more often seen on bottles of booze and pricier items such as CDs and razor blades — on its food packaging to tackle shoplifting.

* More departures from Gordon Brown's administration: As well as Foreign Office Minister Lord Malloch-Brown, Downing Street head of news Tom Hoskin is also off. It would be no surprise to see Malloch-Brown take a business role, having been a high-powered public relations man for US lobbyists Sawyer-Miller and also briefly vice-chairman of Soros Fund Management. Hoskin, who regularly hosted the daily Lobby briefing for journalists, is moving into corporate public relations, joining the Tesco team under über-political operator Lucy Neville-Rolfe.

* Punch magazine, so extinct that copies are no longer found in even the dustiest of dentists' waiting rooms, still files accounts to Companies House. The business, owned by Mohamed Fayed, basically now consists solely of the intellectual property rights to the famous old brand. Little surprise then to see that it lost £123,366 last year. In fairness, the launch of what the accounts describe as “a major book”, The Best of Punch, came just after the financial year end, so things could improve. Also, Fayed and parent company Liberty Holdings have given “indications” of continued funding. But none of that cuts much ice with the auditors, who say the accounts “cast significant doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern”.

* Just in time for the summer holidays, the latest sport comes to City Spy's attention: Madoff-spotting. Not Bernard, of course, who is still locked up in the maximum security wing of Manhattan's Metropolitan Correction Centre. But this week Bernie's wife Ruth had her passport returned from federal prosecutors after turning it in a few months ago as part of Mr M's bail conditions. Since she has been kicked out of her apartment and, as City Spy noted last week, been unable to find a New York landlord willing to take her on as a tenant, if a London visit is on the cards, will Ruth still be able to afford the Lanesborough Hotel, the Madoffs' pre-Ponzi discovery residence?

* IN a rare encyclical, the Pope has called for urgent reform of financial institutions after they wreaked “havoc” with the credit meltdown. “Profit is useful if it serves as a means toward an end,” Pope Benedict declared in the 144-page document. “Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.” On that basis, a lot of people working in high finance may have to quit — or go to confession more regularly.