The London Stock Exchange has taken the almost unprecedented step of taking down a posting on its Regulated News Service after a threat of legal action. There is a complicated and bad-tempered quarrel going on in Ireland between Denis O'Brien, the telecoms millionaire, and Independent News & Media, the details of which need not concern us. INM, a quoted company, posted an announcement on RNS describing O'Brien, in fairly bland terms, you would have thought, as not acting in the best interests of an orderly market for its shareholders.

Ten days later the post has been removed from the archive, something that has happened only “three or four times”, the LSE confirms, over the past decade. “We're not responsible for the content of announcements from RNS customers,” the LSE says. “We would certainly deny any liability.”

The decision was taken, I am told, after a letter from O'Brien's solicitors, content undisclosed. Legally, I reckon, the LSE is wrong. As disseminator of the information, it is responsible if it is defamatory even if, as in this case, there is no chance of the Exchange checking it first. Any lawyers disagree?

Evening when it went wrong from first to last

A corporate event the other evening hosted by Serica Energy, an AIM-listed oil company, went disastrously wrong, I hear. It was a competition to find fictitious oil exploration prospects in which everyone got a fixed amount to invest and they counted up afterwards who made the most. Competing were the company, a gaggle of analysts and a team of advisers. Now listen up. The normal format in these events is that the fund managers, if any are present, are allowed to win. The analysts come second. The client is third, and right at the end are the advisers, playing the good losers. This is true of team-building events, corporate golf days, whatever. Alas, this time the advisers won and the team of analysts came last. “It all went wrong on this one,” admits an organiser. Now wait for the “sell” notes.

— You may recall the sexual harassment claim last year by a trader at US hedge fund SAC Capital, who alleged his boss tried to make him take female hormones and dress as a woman so he and his fellow traders would be less aggressive. Difficult to forget. Now the Trader Daily mail-out reports that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has decided not to support him on the grounds that . . . well, it's all a bit too weird. Nice to think the equivalent body here would take a similar commonsense view, but I doubt it.

— Spotted at one of those everything-for-a-pound shops in North London: “Beat the credit crunch. Everything £1. Same price since 1990.” That was the last time large numbers took an interest in pound shops. Topical, if nothing else.

— I did enjoy an ad the other day in one of those magazines for the staggeringly rich for Eos, the business airline that filed for Chapter 11 last weekend, promoting it as “uncrowded and uncompromising”. Certainly uncrowded. But one businessman has clearly not lost his appetite for upmarket travel. I hear James Caan, the Dragons' Den entrepreneur, has quietly taken a 20 per cent stake in Avolus, which hires chauffeur-driven cars, jets and helicopters.

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