One of the founders of the crashed dot-com site Boo has quietly tried to buy the site back, its new owner tells me. Boo.com, the fashion retail site that typified dot-com extravagance and stupidity, was reborn earlier this year. The name was bought by Ray Nolan, an Irish entrepreneur, to host his Web Reservations International travel site. Boo’s three founders, two of them the photogenic Swedes Ernst Malmsten and Kajsa Leander, got through almost £200 million before it crashed in 2000. “Boo’s a great name,” claims Nolan. “We did have a call from one of the three, I can’t say which, who kept trying to buy it.” Presumably in advance of raising large amounts of fresh capital for another try. They’d probably manage it, too. Truly, what goes around comes around.

The London Stock Exchange held an investor relations training seminar yesterday for quoted companies, teaching them how to get the most out of the City. This is one of a number of such events, but this time one senior fund manager dropped out at the last minute pleading a clash of engagements. They rang round to find a last-minute replacement and discovered most fund managers were attending “site visits” yesterday. Er, could that possibly be Royal Ascot?

Much ado about all those empties

At JPMorgan, they are scrapping the rubbish bins. Rolled out across the eight London properties and 10,000 staff from next month is a Year Zero-type programme, which will see everything recycled, including the existing bins, presumably passed on to some firm that is less eco-conscious. All waste will go into three categories, except for anything that doesn’t fit – polar bears, aircraft engines, the odd corpse – for which you have to ring property management to have it taken away. This category includes bottles, though I can’t see too many people at a US investment bank calling management to get rid of all those empties from last night.

Todd Stitzer, chief executive of Cadbury Schweppes, was asked at the firm’s briefing yesterday what method he preferred when returning capital to shareholders. Special dividend, share buy-back, whatever works best? “We prefer wheelbarrows and dump trucks,” he responded. Probably not quite as funny if you are one of the departing employees . . .

Norton Rose, the City lawyer, has run into grumbling from locals after its move to the More London development south of the Thames. The firm is holding an event for staff and families on July 7 at nearby Potters Field, a park, and posters on a local community website are objecting. “How do you go about challenging these events?” asks one. “Norton Rose are taking over a public space for their own private ends with no benefit for the public for whom the park is intended,” claims another. The lawyer says it is paying for the booking.“We’ve just moved to the area. We take the local community extremely seriously.”

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