IT was an event many company executives would have hated. On Thursday night at the Eurohedge awards under the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum, London’s top hedge funds, best known for beating up quoted companies, showed just how good they are.

TCI’s Chris Hohn, the man who bust Deutsche Börse’s bid for Euronext, reaffirmed his position as Europe’s best manager with returns of more than 50% in 2005. Theo Phanos, whose Trafalgar group has had scraps with BAE Systems and Shell, won the credit award. And Lansdowne Partners, which owns stakes in Arsenal and Tesco, won firm of the year after generating double-digit returns across all its funds.

It was very intimidating — even for Lansdowne’s newest and rather interesting recruit who, I hear, has been snapped up from a slightly different battleground.

In May Arnab Banerji, Tony Blair’s economics adviser, was one of a dozen Downing Street aides accused of deserting the prime minister in the wake of Labour’s general-election results.

Then, just a few weeks ago, Banerji was spotted at the Mayfair headquarters of Lansdowne, which I hear he has joined as a fund manager. It’s early days yet, but I’m told Banerji, who worked at F&C fund managers before Downing Street, may be starting a new emerging-market fund for Lansdowne.

Banerji has his work cut out. The Lansdowne partners have accumulated multi-million-pound fortunes but they have earned them. The three flagship funds — the UK, Financials and European funds generated 27%, 40% and 27%, respectively, last year.

Still, given the experiences of others who have headed east from Downing Street — Steven Norris of scandal-hit Jarvis, Ken Clarke of struggling Savoy and Alan Milburn of Bridgepoint, for example — Banerji doesn’t have too tough an act to follow.

Langbar wife gets into top gear

I WAS STUNNED last weekend by the news that Barry Townsley, the wannabe Labour peer, thought it appropriate to travel by private jet in his capacity as adviser to Langbar, the cash shell being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office for seeming never to have had any cash.

But now I hear that travelling expensively is something of a habit among some Langbar executives, and one they still haven’t kicked.

Last week there was a flurry of excitement in the sleepy villages near Otley, West Yorkshire, as a lorry carrying a spanking new Porsche 911 squeezed down country lanes. These cars cost about £60,000.

I’m told it was delivered to a charming house belonging to none other than Stuart Pearson, former chief executive of Langbar, best known for travelling all the way from London to Brazil to verify millions of pounds of company cash, yet still failing to notice it wasn’t there.

Pearson couldn’t be contacted but a close source said the car was in his wife’s name and would have been ordered before the scandal broke. That’s okay then.

• EVEN in these dark days of pension crises, the demands of UK Coal’s retired employees are hefty. Flicking through the company’s accounts, I found a strange reference to retirement benefits “in the form of heating coal”. This refers to an archaic rule under which employees can claim part of their benefit in sacks of coal.

  It may sound quaint, but UK Coal is also obliged to deliver the sacks to individual homes at a cost that amounts to three times more than the fuel is worth.

  I am told executives have tried everything to wriggle out of this. So far all they have established is that employees who don’t have a fireplace can’t claim the fuel. Now that is a retirement problem.
  

• AH HA. I was wondering when my friend Stephen Lumb, the mysterious chairman of St James Capital Holdings, would reappear. Three months ago Prufrock was intrigued by Lumb’s playboy pretensions and his apparent reluctance to pay for them. Last year he ran up a bill of £10,000 with a party organiser that, I am told, he still hasn’t paid.

  Now I hear he is buying Walton Castle, near Clevedon, in north Somerset, for £3.5m. The remote 17th-century hunting lodge belongs to party hostess Margarita Hamilton, pictured above at the castle. Lumb refused to talk to me but apparently has loudly told locals he plans to spend a further £20m converting the relic into a sports and leisure complex. It’s a perfect party spot. I’ll watch the developments with interest.
  

• HOWEVER much I ask, I am assured that Euan Blair has proved a model trainee during his work experience at Finsbury. The prime minister’s eldest son slotted straight in, “working hard” on the JSainsbury and Boots accounts while “charming” several senior executives along the way. Thursday was his 22nd birthday and the City spinners confirmed their approval by producing a cake. One employee grumbled to Prufrock: “We never usually get cake on birthdays.”

  Blair Jr later headed off with other staff for a few drinks — though, being good spinners, I’m told they avoided Leicester Square.

• PATRICK KRON, the man who rescued Alstom, the French industrial giant, was on good form at a dinner in London last week. In his speech he alluded to some of the problems the company has faced in Britain. He didn’t mention them by name, but he was referring to an overambitious contract to make Virgin’s Pendolino train fleet, and one to manage the Tube’s Northern Line trains.

  He went on to say that, like other Frenchmen, he couldn’t understand the English fascination with cricket. “You play five times for over ten weeks — and the winner gets some burnt wood. Even Alstom in its worst days wouldn’t have signed up to those terms.”

  Okay, but who won the 2012 Olympics, eh?

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