Things have come to a pretty pass for Manchester United when even Gordon Brown and Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill feel moved to comment about the club's worrying debt levels.

The fact that collapsed insurer AIG still sponsors the club, which is trying to raise up to £700 million on the bond markets, is bizarre enough. But United also offers diehard fans a range of financial services, including insurance and savings and also lots of borrowing — credit cards (typical APR 15.9 per cent compared with the current Bank of England rate of 0.5 per cent) and mortgages (4.49 per cent fixed-rate for a three-year term, courtesy of Britannia Building Society).

City Spy knows how important it is to “expand the brand” but hasn't the last two-and-a-half years of credit crunch shown us this might not be the best idea…

A big cheese full of holes

Since last October, the MediaGuardian website has been running an entertaining graphic, called the Big Cheese Chart, which follows the fortunes of the runners and riders in the race to fill four of the top jobs in broadcasting — respectively chairman and chief executive of both ITV and Channel 4. Alas the chart hasn't had much success in pin-pointing the likely winners, failing to include any of the following: Terry Burns (later unveiled as C4 chairman), Archie Norman (new ITV chairman) or David Abraham (C4's just-appointed chief executive). Now, as the City awaits the final appointment, that of ITV's chief executive, there's a chance that none of the four eventual winners will have featured. Oh dear.

Bank analyst causes jitters

Well done to Kian Abouhossein, London-based banking analyst at JPMorgan. He caused shockwaves in the wake of Barack Obama's announcement of a major clampdown on proprietary trading by putting out a note calculating how much the curbs were likely to cost five major banks in lost revenue — a not inconsiderable $13 billion hit at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, UBS and Deutsche. That translates to an estimated $4.67 billion drop in profits across the five, with UBS alone potentially losing out on $1.92 billion in profit. News of Abouhossein's note got picked up by the financial wires. Cue frantic calls to Abouhossein's office to get more information as banking shares tanked by eight per cent and more. So where was Abouhossein, having compiled this explosive analyst's note? Out of the office on holiday.

Big hearts and big heads at Goldman Sachs

Just how much of a sacrifice is it for the top bankers at Goldman Sachs in London to cap their pay deals at £1 million for the past financial year? Annual accounts for Goldman Sachs International for 2008 show that the highest-paid director on the London board — which includes co-chief executives Michael Sherwood and Richard Gnodde — was paid $1.9 million (£1.3 million). So they have suffered similarly lean years already before this supposed new act of self-sacrifice with salary and bonus caps. Let's not forget as well that Goldman's top brass have built up tidy fortunes in the good times. The annual pay and bonus of the top Goldman director in London in 2007, by contrast to 2008, was $23.4 million. And share awards from previous bumper years, which are vesting now, mean that Goldman bankers are hardly on the bread line this year…

Some people really are desperate to join the “God squad”. A wannabe Goldmanite's job application for a summer internship has been leaked online. “As of this moment you probably have never heard of me, but in five years you will look back unable to imagine life without me,” it modestly begins. The candidate goes on: “My desire to succeed in the investment industry is beyond comparison and I will not stop working towards this goal until the day my heart stops beating … Even as I write this letter, I'm getting phone calls and text messages from people asking what stocks I put my money in today and where they should put theirs tomorrow. This is the life I live every day but I don't want to stay like this forever, I want to learn and I don't want to settle. Goldman Sachs is where I want to work and there's no alternative in my mind…” The application concludes: “I'm not asking you to do this for me, I'm asking you to do this for us.” No word on whether it was successful…

How Richardson saved the banks on the crest of a wave

Former Bank of England Governor Gordon Richardson, who has died aged 94, is given glowing obituaries for his role in leading the “lifeboat” rescue in the Seventies — the last time Britain's banks teetered on the edge of collapse. Richardson told the bankers to get their act together by saying: “Gentlemen, I am not appealing to altruism.” Richardson was a more dashing figure than his recent successors, Mervyn King and Eddie George. One City blade recalled his first impression of Richardson in his pomp: “Very handsome man; he seemed to be quite tall but he wasn't. Very elegant, very imposing. A god.” Mervyn and his embattled US counterpart Ben Bernanke, struggling for re-election as Federal Reserve chairman, don't get write-ups like that…

Observing success

Normally, when a newspaper columnist wins an award, the publication trumpets the news. So was the Observer proud to announce that Simon Caulkin was unanimously voted as management columnist of the year for his weekly column by the Work Foundation last week? Er, no — not a word appeared on Sunday. It's hardly likely the paper was unaware of his triumph — after all, Caulkin was presented with the prize by Observer columnist Will Hutton. Surely, the silence is not due to the fact that Caulkin was axed by the Obs in the summer and the paper is too embarrassed to congratulate him?