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All this sounds pretty sensible, but what’s irking those in the corridors of learning is that Davies sits on the board of Morgan Stanley as a non-executive director. Yes, the same investment bank that had to write down $9.4 billion (£4.7 billion) worth of sub-prime-related investments. Where, they snigger (in a highbrow way), was all that knowledge when it would have made a difference?

- AS the bell tolled for Silverjet on Friday morning there was a brief silence to mark the passing of the last standing business-only airline.While some paid their respects, others just looked for returns.

Video-conferencing company Teliris, for example, has offered anyone booked to fly between London and New York on Silverjet an opportunity to have that same meeting over its “VirtuaLive telepresence” link. The company, whose European division is chaired by the former BBC newsreader Martyn Lewis, claims that its telepresence is the holy grail of corporate communications, offering the ability to interrupt and argue with other participants without any time delays.

How cheery! At least with Silverjet you got a trip to New York.

- NOT everything sex-related is rising to the occasion.

Earlier this year we reported that Amora, a “love, sex and relationships” museum that opened last year at London’s Trocadero centre, was struggling to attract anything like the 500,000 people a year predicted to pay to visit the erotic attraction.

The company was also having some difficulty paying its creditors and was forced into raising more cash despite an original investment of more than £4m from investors, including the private-equity house Alchemy.

At the time, George Westropp, a board director, assured us that 2008 would be better.

Five months later and Amora has flopped into administration, proving that nothing is sacred in the credit crunch.

- IF you were named after the engine that powered the Spitfire, you might expect to end up in the aviation business. It’s even more likely if for generations your family has run a trading house in Asia controlling airlines, shipping and property.

Step forward Merlin Swire, 33, boss of Taeco, the aero-engine servicing subsidiary in China of the Swire group, which runs Cathay Pacific. So it’s fortunate that Merlin’s father, Sir Adrian, didn’t have a thing for Pratt & Whitney — though poor Merlin still spent his childhood explaining: “Daddy named me after a famous, er, aeroplane engine.”

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