So Brownite Treasury civil servant John Kingman is quitting as £143,000-a-year chief executive of UK Financial Investments, which oversees the Government's stakes in Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds, Bradford & Bingley, etc. Kingman is well-regarded in the City but the task of running UKFI looks gruelling even for a tough nut like him. Moreover, he has scant experience of banking or trading in financial markets - which is surely a weakness when the Government has to offload the stakes in those banks in due course.

What's significant is that Kingman, 40, won't be returning to the Treasury and is quitting the Civil Service for the private sector. Having risen so far so fast - he became number two, Second Permanent Secretary, at the age of just 37 - there was a view that he would struggle to rise further quickly. The Cameroons were likely to regard him with suspicion too, given he used to be Gordon Brown's press secretary. But having built up a fantastic contacts book (he dealt regularly with Goldman Sachs, UBS, Citi, Credit Suisse, among others during the frantic bank bailouts), he will have his pick of City jobs and a far juicier salary than £143,000.

* Sir Win Bischoff will earn a flat salary of £700,000 a year as the new chairman of Lloyds — a small increase on what departing incumbent Sir Victor Blank collected. Last year Blank's package was £669,000 — a basic fee of £640,000, plus £29,000 extra in benefits, partly in lieu of a company car (Sir Victor memorably has a red Smart car). Bischoff is used to Wall Street munificence from his days at Citigroup where he served as chairman during the dark days of 2008. According to Citi's April 2008 proxy filing, Sir Win got a $1 million salary, a $1.95 million cash bonus, $3.09 million in stock awards and $1.95 million in retention equity awards. That was an annual package theoretically worth a total of around $7.99 million. Alas that was before Citi's share price headed south…

The blundering herd at Merrill

Bankers at Merrill Lynch are getting a bit hot under the collar about business cards. Apparently, some are upset that the bank's “bull” logo is only being used by wealth management staff, and have taken to carrying two cards around, their old ones (with the Thundering Herd bull logo), and the new design. One of its employees told the Wall Street Journal: “Merrill without the bull is like Superman without the cape.” Given that Merrill no longer exists as a standalone bank after its rescue from collapse by Bank of America, City Spy can't help feeling it's all a load of bull.

* We knew things were tough in the banking industry, but this tough? It seems that bankers have turned from private jet to, er, Ryanair. Citigroup's latest note on the no-frills airline is titled, “Time to Exploit the Recession — Buy Ryanair (Shares and Tickets)”.

* Pharma giant Glaxo isn't the only firm to be making money out of swine flu. Foxhaven, a firm which makes body bags, reports that demand from the UK has got so high that one of its factories in Asia has cleared its production lines of other goods to meet orders. And one of its rivals, SP Services, has recruited extra staff to deal with an extra £750,000 of swine flu-related sales, including body bags and inflatable mortuaries.

I'm proud to be paranoid and a micro-manager

Sir Martin Sorrell never tires of comparing himself with Napoleon. As the emperor of WPP delights in telling business TV channel CNBC in an interview to be broadcast tomorrow: “I am exactly the same size as Napoleon. Five foot six and a half, don't forget the half.” Very droll, Martin.

He also shows little sign of wanting to retire. He freely admits to CNBC he is a micromanager (“I don't think that's an insult, I think that's a compliment. I think people who fail, fail because they're not involved enough”) and paranoid (“being paranoid is an extremely good idea”). Doubtless that has helped Sorrell, chief executive of WPP since 1986, avoid meeting his own Waterloo.

But Sir Martin turned 64 this year and, from what City Spy hears, questions about succession planning at WPP won't go away...

* There may be 52 pubs a week going to the wall in Britain but it's not all doom and gloom in the trade. Directors of The Capital Pub Company — which admittedly runs some of the better hosteleries across town — have been rewarded handsomely for their efforts. Profits went up 7% last year but chief executive Clive Watson's pay and bonus package rose 16% to £220,000. Even better veteran pub man David Bruce's package rose 27% to £242,000 despite the fact that he dropped down from executive to non-exec director last summer. Cheers, chaps!

* Pity Allen Stanford. The US financier alleged to have masterminded a $7 billion ponzi scheme is in prison awaiting his trial. But his lawyers have applied to the courts for him to be moved from his current place of incarceration — the privately-run Joe Coley Detention Facility in Texas. Apparently this jail's power supplies failed leaving Stanford without air-conditioning for at least a week and he has to share a cell with up to ten other inmates. Poor love.

* Following City Spy's story last week about The Observer being deluged with letters from angry readers upset about the axeing of Simon Caulkin's management column (“To drop Caulkin just when his writing is at its most relevant is impossible to understand,” raged one unnamed reader), the Sunday newspaper has responded. Caulkin's column won't be restored because of a budget squeeze but the editor of The Observer, John Mulholland, says: “I hope that Simon can continue his relationship with the paper and that we can publish his writing from time to time. Should the economic climate change, perhaps we can revisit the issue.” A fine example of management speak...