What is Robert Hanson, son of the late industrialist Lord Hanson, up to?

Yesterday it was announced that he is leaving the advisory board of listed corporate finance house, Hanson Westhouse — the company formed by the merger of his firm Hanson Capital with Westhouse in August 2006.

Not only is he quitting to “pursue other family business interests” but also the name Hanson is going to disappear. The company will be renamed Westhouse Holdings although he will keep his 19.6% shareholding for the time being. It's the end of a 12-year relationship, as Robert, who previously worked for NM Rothschild and his father's old Hanson group, set up Hanson Capital in 1997.

Friends of Hanson — as well known in gossip columns as in the City because of his succession of female admirers including Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and Sophie Anderton — decline to elaborate on his departure. But he is tipped to take up another City board role imminently. Could this mean a revival of the Hanson name on the stock market?

All aboard the Yeowarts express

A BATTLE royal has broken out on the trains where Ian Yeowart is bringing back the GNER and GNWR names. His eastern proposal, GNER, would rival the London-Sunderland service set up last year by Grand Central. And until recently, Yeowart worked for Grand Central and he remains a shareholder in the company. Is Grand Central pleased? Er, not one bit. His former colleagues have put out a statement saying he was “dismissed from his position as an employee and director of Grand Central on 27 May 2009. His dismissal is currently the subject of proceedings in the Employment Tribunal”. They maintain they've submitted plans for some of his proposed routes to the rail regulator and he was working on the new services when he was with them. They're also miffed because they say he's broken undertakings given to them. In short, they're consulting their legal eagles and are preparing to do their utmost to stop him.

Oh dear.

* SAINSBURY is taking on Tesco's double Clubcard points loyalty scheme by beefing up its involvement with Nectar, the company set up by Sir Keith Mills. Sainsbury now uses data collected from Nectar cards to hand out coupons at the till — and more than 60 brands, including Unilever, Procter & Gamble and Heinz have signed up. So perhaps they haven't read Ipsos Mori's latest research which found that 66% of those on loyalty deals said the schemes do not motivate them to spend more… Oops!

* IS early decision-making catching in the Murdoch media empire? We've had the Sun declaring for the Tories even though David Cameron has yet to say much — and his sidekick George Osborne causes the City to tremble. Now The Wall Street Journal has published a glorification of life inside the Kraft food empire. It's all about how local managers are allowed more control over their budgets and operations. The example it cites? The bosses of the company's Vegemite brand in Australia. The message is clear: for Vegemite, read Cadbury's Dairy Milk...

* SO farewell, staycation. You were a brief fad that survived until it took Brits to remember why they usually like to get out of the country in the summer. (A clue — it comes from the sky and is wet). TUI Travel boss Peter Long says bookings for next summer are coming in strongly. “People like sun. They want sun,” he says. Quite.

* WHAT does Sir Stuart Rose make of the plight of that other high-profile executive chairman of a stock market-listed company, ITV's Michael Grade? Euan Stirling, a fund manager at Standard Life and major shareholder in ITV, says that Grade's appointment was always likely to end in tears. “ITV went into this [fiasco] with a combined role of chief executive and chairman and the mess that they are in at the moment just highlights the dangers of that,” Stirling told Radio 4's Today Programme. “It emphasises how important it is to have two strong characters in the role of both chairman and chief executive. It is often very useful to have two characters to act as a foil to each other.” Now Sir Stuart has certainly made a better fist of M&S but it is still a recipe for trouble. After all, Rose is doing exactly what Grade did at ITV — by trying to stay on as non-executive chairman while the search starts for a new chief executive. Incidentally, Standard Life also holds a shareholding of around 1% in M&S …

* WHEN Russian zillionaire Mikhail Prokhorov last week announced a bid for New York basketball team the New Jersey Nets, America's press went to town about meeting the “new most eligible bachelor”.

Some papers got a bit confused about just how eligible Prokhorov was, however.

The New York Times, in a piece comparing Prokhorov with New York's other famous non-married billionaire — its non-smoking mayor Michael Bloomberg — made a bit of a boo boo.

The article, er, “misstated Mr Prokhorov's net worth” and a correction now reads: “It is $9.5 billion, not $9.5 million.” Quite a difference.

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THE Financial Times is celebrating its Top Fifty Women In World Business ranking with a party at Roast in Borough Market tomorrow night — a stone's throw from the Pink 'Un's headquarters in Southwark.

The paper has already revealed the names of the 50. Alas, there's no place for Dame Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of the Financial Times' publisher Pearson.

Another eight women did not make the cut because they have been CEO for under 12 months. These include new Yahoo! boss Carol Ann Bartz and Xerox chief Ursula Burns.

A further eight women are given credit as “lieutenants” — “because they are below CEO level or head majority-controlled companies, subsidiaries or divisions”.

Among those in this “close-but-no-cigar” category are Five TV chief Dawn Airey and Dominique Senequier of Axa Private Equity.

* SERIOUSLY, Donald's daughter Ivanka Trump has written a self-help book: Trump Card — Playing To Win In Work And Life. Having a rich daddy helps.