This is an unusual new scam being perpetrated on City firms by fake headhunters. It happened to one well-known institution, and got to court. You are a bogus headhunter. You round up the names of everyone working in a given area - say, Venezuelan bonds - who doesn't already work for your target. You send a list to that firm, unsolicited, saying 'you really should hire these people'. The list is, of course, ignored. You then wait until one of those on the list is hired by the firm - it's a small world in Venezuelan bonds. You come after the firm with a writ, claiming that you effected the introduction and demanding a fee.

My bloke refused, and won in court. Other firms might find it easier to bung across a few thousand than go to the trouble of legal action. A (genuine) headhunter is doubtful it would work too often. “When you are dealing with an aggressive hiring environment, you're always going to come across your share of chancers.”

‘Brutally hard’ life on frontline at Barclays

Employees at Barclays really should get hold of the speech that Paul Idzik, their chief operating officer, gave recently to Stanford Graduate School of Business. Idzik spoke movingly of the “brutally hard” business of being a corporate leader, which mainly seems to involve sacking people. In 2002 he was in charge of Barclays Capital. “In 2003, we had 1,050 gross hires, netting out only 150, which meant in the end we replaced an awful lot of people in the senior ranks,” he recalled. Then the time came to fire three directors. “We had to keep it quiet and not tell the three people who we were replacing that they were going until it was time. It was tough.” I'll bet it was, Paul. Only at an American college could you be so forthright about such matters, I suspect.

Official way to engineer some compensation

From a recent document from the rail regulator, on compensation for engineering work: “ ‘Corresponding Day' means, in respect of any day [the ‘first day']: [a] a day which is contained in the same Timetable Period as the first day and on which the Services scheduled in the First Working Timetable are the same as would have been scheduled on the first day but for Restrictions of Use reflected in the First Working Timetable for the first day; or [b] if no day is found under paragraph [a] above, then a day which is contained in the equivalent Timetable Period ...” Oh, I give up. There's any amount more. Is it any wonder that the trains don't run on time? On the same subject, Network Rail's website fails to mention the recent knighthood for chairman Sir Ian McAllister, just as large chunks of the network were closed. A mistake, or has he done the decent thing? You decide.

— Eccentric bunch, investment bankers. The chauffeur a couple of years ago for one highly placed individual, who worked at a big American bank I shall playfully call Kidd Livingstone, has been in touch. His charge would regularly head off to the local Tube station, without telling the driver. After one such incident he called Canary Wharf head office to check that his charge had arrived and query this behaviour. He was told: “Oh, some of the people here are quite odd...”

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