Some of the biggest names in corporate life were at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire on Friday night for the closing black-tie banquet at the annual Oxford Analytica conference, a big pow-wow on global politics and business. Delegates may only attend by invitation and the sponsors are a serious bunch — among them Shell, Ernst & Young and Old Mutual. The guest speaker at the banquet was set to be David Cameron but City Spy hears that the Tory leader pulled out with just days to go. Lord Malloch-Brown, a Foreign Office minister until the summer and a former high-powered Washington lobbyist, was drafted in as a replacement.

Malloch-Brown may be well-connected but he is hardly on a par with Cameron — or last year's heavy-hitting guest speaker, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

Theoretically, Cameron ought to have had no problem popping over to Blenheim — his Witney constituency is a short drive away. One rumour doing the rounds was that Dave's advisers didn't want him to attend as they feared the press reaction if the Old Etonian were seen in black tie living it up at Blenheim Palace...

* MOST people refer to UKFI, the Government body set up to manage the taxpayers' stakes in the bailed-out banks, as UK F.I. (pronounced “eye”). Not the City minister, Lord Myners. He calls it “uckfee”. Just one letter, is all it takes..

More moody gossip for Boris

MAYOR Boris Johnson, writing in The Spectator, is suitably self-deprecating about his recent visit to New York — but, he suggests, London could learn something from the pomp and ceremony that Wall Street indulges in for the opening and closing bells each day.

“You should see the fuss they make when they open the Nasdaq,” says the Mayor. “Every morning as 9.30 approaches they do a moonshot countdown, with the running dogs of capitalism whooping and hollering like some Wild West saloon. On Monday, I have the honour of pressing the bell to start the day's trading. I press the buzzer and, of course, the markets start to fall. Mind you, they pick up during the day.

“By the time we arrive to close the New York Stock Exchange at 4pm, they are up 21 points. The place has the air of a JD Wetherspoon in the middle of the afternoon, with people leaning up against bars and gossiping moodily.”

Boris, in a Wetherpoon's? Still, he is right about the need for moody gossip. More please!

* DESPITE the image, former Renault F1 boss Flavio Briatore is far from the inner sanctum of the elite of Italian commercial and society circles. The Fiat-controlling Agnelli family, Briatore's erstwhile masters the Benettons and the all-powerful puppetmasters of Italy at the secretive Milanese merchant bank, Mediobanca, and a mere handful of others, are known as the “Salotto Buono” or “great drawing room”. Sighed one monogram-shirted, brown-loafered aristocrat from Mediobanca: “Briatore would not even be allowed in to plump up the cushions.”

Not quite Diamond yet, Bob

Interesting that the Wall Street Journal Europe should give such prominence to a story about Barclays bank. “Last September, Barclays Plc's daring purchase of assets from bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings was meant to signal the British were coming to the big leagues of global investment banking,” says the paper. “A frantic year later, the UK bank and its president, Robert E Diamond Jr, who runs the company's investment banking operation, are involved in some of the biggest merger deals, but still face a long road before they can say they have arrived among the world's elite.”

The WSJ points out that while BarCap has increased its market share in global debt capital markets compared to a year ago, its share of global equity markets has fallen — compared to what Lehman had before. BarCap also missed out on the mandate for US food giant Kraft's bid for Cadbury.

All valid points, even more so considering WSJ Europe editor Patience Wheatcroft was a director of Barclays until earlier this year.

* BALFOUR Beatty's £380 million takeover of American consulting engineer Parsons Brinckerhoff caps a busy time for the UK construction company, which has now bought five substantial US businesses in a little over two years. In fact, this deal-addicted urge to continually improve earnings and, though from here, the need to want to do rather well over there seems, well, almost Hansonesque. No surprise then that Ian Tyler, the man running Balfour, is indeed one of the master's apprentices, having been an accountant for Lord Hanson back in the 1980s and 1990s.

* PARSONS Brinckerhoff is a big name in New York, from helping build the city's subway in the 19th century to working on current plans for the World Trade Center site. In the UK they have attempted to muscle in on London's massive Crossrail project and been involved in the Department of Energy's evaluation of the major River Severn tidal power project. But should they stick to their own local knowledge? One of their reports on the Severn scheme put the proud Gloucestershire towns of Lydney and Cinderford in Wales...

* THE Financial Times is heralding the launch of the inaugural FT Top Fifty Women in the World of Business. But where on earth will FT editor Lionel Barber have placed (if at all) Dame Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of the FT's owner Pearson, who after all will be signing off the expenses on the awards bash?

* TULLOW Oil's Aidan Heavey must be the only Irishman making money these days. While Dublin's assorted property players, hucksters and “entrepreneurs” have lost fortunes, Heavey has seen his stake in the oil explorer rocket in value from £30 million at the start of the year to nearly £77 million on the back of its African oil finds. At this rate, Heavey should be able to buy half of Dublin — given the distressed state of the property market there.