OLIVER HEMSLEY, the chief executive of Numis, has a treat for his latest client when he arrives in London next month. Hemsley has been taken on as financial adviser to the autocratic ruler of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who is due here next month.

Hemsley has been telling people he might arrange a private viewing of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, which premiered this week at The Times BFI London Film Festival.

He is, I hope, joking; you will not need telling that the Kazakhs regard the Borat film as juvenile and insulting, and any reference to it will hardly help Hemsley to pick up any lucrative privatisation work. In any case, I imagine pirate copies are easily available in the souk at Almaty, the Kazakh capital, where Numis is about to set up an office.

Incidentally, Numis, I learn, is planning to quit its Cheapside offices for space at the new Stock Exchange building round the corner. The broker is chaired by Michael Spencer’s Icap, which recently bought EBS, also based in the Stock Exchange building. And Spencer has also been trying to take over the Stock Exchange itself, which would give him close to a clean sweep in the building.

No, it doesn’t actually mean anything. I just thought I’d mention it.

WILL the planned takeover of United Biscuits be subject to more than usually stringent regulatory scrutiny? I am told John Tiner, the chief executive of the Financial Services Authority, has a strong penchant for Jaffa Cakes.

Poor relations

TROUBLE and strife in the world of financial PR. Now, the doings of these overpaid spokesweasels would not normally trouble us, but I am told someone is especially keen that this story not appear, so here goes. Evolution has for some time had Bell Pottinger as its mouthpiece, as does fellow broker Panmure Gordon.

Now Andy Stewart, a man who seems to have inspired as many rows as he has had winning racehorses, has hired his old friend Piers Pottinger, chairman of Bell P, to help with the float of Cenkos, his broker. This has not gone down at all well with at least one of the other clients, because Stewart has recently vociferously criticised Evolution for its alleged general uselessness and inability to spend its cash pile.

Time, perhaps, will heal all wounds, as Pottinger is off the case in a week or so. Or perhaps not.

THEY are not overly bright, are they, these pinheads who peddle penny shares by spam e-mail? I have been plagued with 20 or so recommendations for some American gold-mining no-hoper, all of which begin “The first thing to do on Wednesday October 25 is to get in on . . .”

Private view

THE people at Mellon Bank have a beef with their neighbours at Euromoney, whose offices at Nestor House in Playhouse Square overlook them and have just been refurbished. It’s a bit embarrassing, really, and it’s about the bathrooms on the first floor, the ones with frosted glass.

The frosting is, how should I put this, a bit less effective than one might hope, and could they, er, do something? “We would rather that executive seats rested in the fleet of Mercedes limousines parked in the square than be waved at the world,” says one Mellon man.

I make inquiries and, though no one at Euromoney will say anything, it seems they are aware of the problem and it is being tackled.

BEFORE he became embroiled in the recent spying scandal, Mark Hurd, chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, was known in the computer industry for his dislike of publicity. He faced a trade fair in San Francisco the other day. “I was here last year — we’ve had a few changes since I spoke to you. I personally try to stay out of the news. As you know, I haven’t executed that strategy very well,” he admitted wryly.

Tight at the top

IT IS widely accepted that the British mega-rich are less generous than their American counterparts. Nigel Harris, a banker for 12 years at Schroders who now runs New Philanthropy Capital, which researches charities for potential donors, came up with a useful illustration the other night.

Speaking at a do co-hosted by NPC and private equity outfit Pi Capital, he said the pattern of charitable giving in the US had a “U” shape, while in the UK it was an “L”.

In America, the poor give proportionately more, those in the middle less, and the rich more again. Up, down, and up again.

In the UK, the poor again give proportionately more and those in the middle less. But there is no pick-up for the rich, hence the line on the graph remains flat.

PING! An e-mail arrives from Tesco. (Via a puzzled informant, actually — I don’t shop at Tesco. Sorry, Terry.) It offers a “fantastic, once in a lifetime” chance to win a trip to the Ashes in Australia next summer. All you need is to buy some Aussie wine over the next couple of weeks and invent a suitable time machine to satisfy the other entry condition, which is to send in your name and address “by 27/08/06”. The e-mail is clearly dated “Wednesday 25 October 2006”. Fantastic, indeed. An error, Tesco admits.

A brush with the lower orders

My series of recollections on life before Big Bang, when senior partners had little or no idea how their juniors lived, prompts a further recollection from Gerry Liberman, now at Bridgewell.

He was part of the sales team at Panmure Gordon when, one Monday morning, the late Lord McGowan, a genuinely nice man, right, who ran the corporate finance bit, walked on to the old Stock Exchange floor.

“Had a good weekend?” asked McGowan kindly. “I spent it painting, sir.” “Oh. Landscape or portrait?” “No, sir, the lounge, the hall, the stairs and the landing.” Liberman confesses that the tale has enlivened many a Panmure leaving do.

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