A HEAVYWEIGHT conference on the subject of combatting fraud will get advice from someone with first-hand experience. Nick Leeson is to be the keynote speaker at the Offshore Alert Annual Symposium in Florida in October.

Leeson, the trader who broke Barings Bank, is making a living on the after-dinner circuit, and he is shortly to appear on Radio 4’s On the Ropes programme, hosted by John Humphrys. But this is his most serious engagement yet. He is sharing a platform with John Moscow, the Manhattan District Attorney, and Dr Stanton Samenow, a criminal psychiatrist who examined the Washington sniper.

THERE appears to be a touch of paranoia in the air at Eurotunnel to judge by the categorical denial of a report that new chairman Jacques Maillot, who led the French rebel shareholders, might be stepping down. “The Eurotunnel board strongly denounces what appears to be an attempt to destabilise the company,” it says, launching an “appeal for patience and calm”. Funny, that’s what the last board said in the face of a mob of shareholders who did manage to destabilise the cross-Channel group.

Burden of roof

A BUSY time for Chris Dickson, the former SFO sleuth now castigating accountants at the Joint Disciplinary Scheme. Dickson took a drive past the Essex home of Martin Marcus, as part of his investigation into the former QMH deputy chairman.

“It is a very nice house,” Dickson told a tribunal hearing. “There are a number of agreeable motor cars outside which he makes use of.” Anthony Evans, QC, chairing the session, chipped in: “I am not asking you to be an estate agent in Essex but what sort of price are we talking about?” Dickson replied: “Probably £400,000 or £500,000.” Hardly a mansion, then.

ALAN PARKER is renowned as possibly the best connected spin-doctor in the City. But when his client M&S sacked its chief executive, Roger Holmes, on Monday, the Brunswick boss found out just minutes before the news was broadcast to the world — at the same time that he was told he wasn't working for M&S any more. Even more gallingly, the account has gone to Tulchan, which was set up four years ago by three former Brunswick executives, led by Andrew Grant, a former lieutenant of Parker.

city.diary@thetimes.co.uk

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