One wonders what category of expenses this comes under. Travel? Sustenance? Office expenses?

An Israeli company has argued that it should have been able to get a reduction from its annual tax bill because of the $860,000 of bribes that it said it had to pay in order to do business in Africa.

The case was thrown out of court in Tel Aviv on February 8, after Judge Magen Altuvia ruled that Israeli companies must adhere to the values of their home nation even while conducting business abroad.

The “state's values don't stop at its borders and the petitioner's request damages the bedrock of Israeli law and its legal system”, he wrote in a judgment.

The company, whose name has been withheld by the court, had argued that the business conducted in this particular country was not a threat to Israeli business ethics - either at home or in other countries.

Morgan Stanley man shows his artistic side

Franck Petitgas, Morgan Stanley's global co-head of investment banking, has been appointed by Downing Street to serve as a trustee to the Tate galleries.

The Frenchman, who has been with Morgan Stanley since 1993 and is a keen collector of contemporary Latin American art, joins a string of other City luminaries who serve as Tate trustees. They include Lord Browne of Madingley, the former BP chief executive, Sir Howard Davies, former chairman of the FSA, and Paul Myners, the non-executive chairman of Land Securities.

Goldman gloom

Uncertain times at Goldman Sachs at the moment amid the latest round of City job cuts. The bank, as usual, refuses to comment, although insiders speak of a higher than usual degree of nervousness among staff, many of them at a pretty senior level.

A source close to the bank's Fleet Street headquarters dismisses the job losses as “the usual annual cull of the worst-performing 5 per cent of staff”.

Which is all very well, except that 5 per cent of 6,000 is really rather a lot of jobs.

Knowaste recycles nappies

Waste company Knowaste has a novel use for disposable nappies clogging up landfill sites: it plans to recycle them into rooftiles and cladding. The Canadian company is looking for land in the Midlands and Wales, where it plans to invest £20 million in its first UK processing facility, to open later this year. In addition to handling around 100,000 tonnes of nappies per year, the plant would also be able to process “other absorbent hygiene products”. Charming.

Radio rejig

Rajar, the radio audience measurement body, has suffered a big embarrassment. It has had to withdraw incorrect figures it published just two weeks and reissue figures for nearly 300 stations. Hopes the figures would be much better were short-lived. The changes at each major radio group, from Capital 95.8 owner GCap to Magic-owner Bauer, were not life-changing. “It was a very tiny error,” insisted a Rajar spokeswoman. “It affects mainly the smaller regional stations.”

Palatial splendour

Among the many weird and wonderful assets owned by Badri Patarkatsishvili, the recently deceased Georgian billionaire, is one of the more bizarre buildings in Tbilisi: the former Soviet Palace of Weddings.

Perched above the Kura river, the palace was built as a secular cathedral for marriage ceremonies, but since buying it in 2002, Patarkatsishvili had used it as his Georgian home and business HQ.

His wife, Inna Gudavadze, is set to inherit the building as part of his £6 billion fortune alongside his two daughters, Liana, 28, and 25-year-old Inna, who were frequent visitors to the couple's other home - a £9 million mansion in Leatherhead.

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