An independent TV production company is seeking former City bankers who have been sacked or made redundant to be followed around in their search for new jobs. Wall To Wall Productions made the highly rated celebrity genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are?, The 1900 House, the dishcloths-and-pyramids drama Ancient Egyptians and a couple of brilliant misery dramas, Smallpox and The Day Britain Stopped. It is owned by the quoted Shed Media.

The company says it has Channel 4 signed up for the broadcast, which suggests it will definitely go ahead. It wants to talk in confidence to people out of a job in the City because of the economic downturn and, ideally, seeking a new one, and the programme may “reflect on how people may have to adapt their aspirations to the changing times”.

It will focus on the future and “will not provide an opportunity for contributors to bash a former employer”. That would be an entirely different format, and rather a good one, I think, especially if the former employer were to be allowed to express a view on the banker in return. Could someone make that?

Has someone at the New York Stock Exchange jumped the gun? An apology arrives concerning stricken insurer AIG. The NYSE had wrongly posted a notice that said the company’s shares were ceasing trading. “AIG is not subject to suspension and delisting, and was not responsible for the error.

It would appear that the bank branded “Germany’s Dumbest Bank” by Bild newspaper after an error handed $426 million to Lehman Brothers as it collapsed, can’t get anything right. An executive at KfW Bankengruppe fired for the error has won a court case and two years’ salary and bonuses.

Speechmaker was getting ready for take-off

A low-key announcement from Gulf Air, Bahrain’s national carrier, announces that it has hired a new chief executive from Royal Jordanian. So current CEO Bjorn Naf will be on his way in the next few months. Oddly, Naf gave a speech at the Aviation Club in London just a day before and didn’t mention this. One hopes he was only observing the proprieties.

It does seem to be the season for spats. It must be the heat. Already this week we’ve had Goldman Sachs versus Rolling Stone magazine, and various actuaries battling it out. Now welcome to derivatives trader Nassim “black swan” Taleb, louche novelist Will Self and various hedgies.

Self, as I reported, wrote an interesting piece for GQ magazine this year about Taleb’s philosophical views. It included, as I wrote, a claim that his fund had made $20 billion from shorting the market. Taleb, whose “black swan” theory holds that some things are by their nature unforeseeable, now says that figure is wrong, and that he told Self that before publication. An e-mail going round specifically backs this up.

But some fellow hedgies now claim he is covering up for an indiscretion and did say it. Taleb, on his website, accuses one of a smear campaign. “I have very, very stupid enemies.”

Look, just don’t even go there
In the blue corner: Frank Timis

Clearly you can’t keep Frank Timis, the colourful Romanian-born entrepreneur, down. His African Minerals has just placed £63.8 million of shares to develop a mine in Sierra Leone. The wording of the announcement is the usual mining gibberish — “a JORC compliant resource target”, anyone? — but it is clear this is not the mine in Sierra Leone that was nearly the subject of a complicated legal battle with a rival miner. This is quite separate, and Timis said this year that he had government support for his claim there.

Only the truly churlish would point out Timis’s past record on cash raising. It would be inappropriate to mention Regal Petroleum, which he founded and chaired, and the £40 million of money handed over by investors to develop a well in Greece — investors who were somehow persuaded it had up to one billion barrels. In the event, some will remember, it had about as much oil as the average can of sardines. There were investigations by the Financial Services Authority and the Stock Exchange, and Timis had to resign later.

I hope no one will mention those two convictions for heroin possession in the 1990s either, which Timis has to drag around with him. Past history.

As I say, you can’t keep a good man down.

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