Just what concessions is Royal Bank of Scotland boss Stephen Hester offering the Government in exchange for the fresh injection of £25.5 billion, taking the state's stakeholding up to 84%?

Apart from a series of hair-shirt measures, such as no cash bonuses for anyone earning over £39,000, City Spy is told Hester has given a personal assurance to his political masters that he will downsize dramatically the London offices of RBS and move many staff (those that keep their jobs) back to Edinburgh. That ought to go down well with all the Scots around the Cabinet table and it's certainly true that RBS's grand City HQ at 280 Bishopsgate, a monument to old boss Sir Fred Goodwin's ego, is ripe for some pruning.

Some of the swish executive offices on the 11th and 12th floors have already been ripped out by Hester. But his masterplan for a large raft of senior staff to relocate to Scotland is another matter and, he has admitted to friends, it is meeting “resistance”. The danger is a further drain in talent that wants to remain in London from RBS...

ITV still can't ditch Friends

THE curse of Friends Reunited will not end for ITV which bought the site for £170 million in 2005 and signalled as far back as February it wanted to sell it.

A buyer was eventually found, DC Thomson, which agreed the purchase for £25 million in August — a huge loss for ITV but still some money in the bank and a minor coup for departing boss Michael Grade.

Alas, three months later, the Office of Fair Trading has asked the Competition Commission to conduct an inquiry, blocking the sale until April 2010.

By that time, in the rapidly changing world of online, will Friends even be worth £25 million? And will ITV have a new chief executive by then?

Given we are seven months into the search for Grade's successor and still waiting, don't bet on it…

Sorkin's war of words

NOT much camaraderie among US business journalists.

Andrew Ross Sorkin's new book, Too Big To Fail, an inside account of the banking meltdown, has upset fellow reporters on The New York Times (NYT), who accuse him of failing to credit them for uncovering key information.

Doubtless the fact Sorkin has enjoyed a meteoric rise — he is 32 years old, he's a top pundit on cable TV, his book launch was hosted by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, and the tome is likely to debut at number four on the bestseller list — has nothing to do with the gripes of other journalists.

NYT editor Bill Keller is conducting an inquiry but it seems unlikely he will chastise his star employee.

* SPENDING hasn't dried up in the City entirely. The 2008 accounts for J Barbour, the maker of the Square Mile's favourite weekend wax jackets, have just been filed showing the family owned operation pushed up pre-tax profits by over 39% to £12.9 million on sales of £68 million. The 18.9% profit margin is one that even a hedge fund could be proud of. The family also took a hedgie-size £8 million dividend.

* THE phone goes. On the other end is another, yet another, PR person with too much time on their hands. Could we please refer to Boots as Alliance Boots, not just once at the top of the story, but always. No. Get a job.

Browned off at UPS

WHILE the reputation of strike-hit Royal Mail slips further, America has its own problems with UPS, the United Parcel Service.

It's lobbying for political help — dubbed a “Brown Bailout” in reference to the colour of UPS vans.

Meanwhile, opponents led by rival delivery firm Federal Express are campaigning to “Stop the Brown Bailout” and have launched a website brownbailout.com.

Downing Street spin doctors will be relieved this is one mess that can't be blamed on our prime minister. The US website should not be confused with bailoutbrown.com, an amusing spoof game site where the object is for the player to throw a wad of money at a hapless Gordon Brown.