GOLDMAN BANKER IN DIVORCE SKIRMISH
DIVORCES are always grim affairs, but when they involve senior bankers, at least there’s a bit of colour involved.
A Goldman Sachs managing director, Frenchman Yann Samuelides, has been in court battling with Denis Morley, a 67-year-old pensioner, over his wife’s divorce petition.
Morley told Clerkenwell and Shoreditch county court that Samuelides promised a £500,000 payout – Indecent Proposal style – to Alzbeta Holmokova if she left him, saying: “He bribed her to leave me.” He also said Samuelides, 35, had “showered her with gifts” and rented a flat for her.
Morley, whose 28-year-old Slovakian wife eventually filed for divorce on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour, admits having once made a death threat to Samuelides.
The case has been adjourned until 13 October, so watch this space.
BEAUTY TIPS
Ariadne Capital boss and City PM columnist Julie Meyer is certainly in demand.
After recently being hired by the BBC’s Dragon’s Den to star on the online version of the show, Meyer has now collaborated with beauty giant Avon to share her tips for business success in an online masterclass aimed at female entrepreneurs.
The video is now available on Avon’s UK website, though Meyer laughs off the idea she might be branded as the next “face of Avon”.
“It’s got nothing to do with image consulting – I’m providing a bit of mentoring, tips on how to start up your own business, that kind of thing,” she tells me. “Avon is a great, empowering brand for women – and it’s perfect for me because I’ve been playing around with makeup since I was about three years old. When I told my mother what I was doing, she just said: ‘That explains everything!’”
COUCH POTATO
Now doesn’t this just say something about the difference between the two sexes?
We all know that shopping budgets have had to be reined in a smidgeon this year due to the pressures of that blasted credit crunch, in the same way that couples are opting to stay at home and pursue more, ahem, cost-effective ways of entertaining themselves.
But new research from TNS Worldpanel Fashion has shown that though the ladies are still putting in the effort, with fancy bra sales up 10 per cent in the past year, the men are letting the side down.
Apparently, sales of men’s jogging bottoms are up 15 per cent, while pyjamas have been positively flying off the shelves, with sales up by a third this year. Isn’t that just typical?
ART ATTACK
Over to the More London Place offices of accountancy giant Ernst and Young yesterday for an exhibition of art, in association with deaf and blind charity Sense and the firm’s disability working group.
Over fifty different pieces were on display, raising over £3,000 for the charity – including, strangely enough, a number of self-portraits.
One took the form of a three-dimensional model of a bathtub, complete with a figure reclining in the water and the obligatory rubber duck, while another – named “Lucy’s Silhouette” and crafted out of coloured paint and sand to provide texture – went for £400 at auction to EY partner Wendy Fenwick, who also sits on the corporate development board of Sense.
CLEVER CLOGS
FSA chairman Lord Turner might have come under fire in the City recently for his suggestion that banks should be subject to a “Tobin tax” on financial transactions, but it appears his faith in his own capabilities is unshaken.
Turner was on Radio 4 yesterday morning chatting to BBC business editor Robert Peston, when Pesto, recalling his nickname of “Clever Adair”, asked him if he was always the brightest boy in the class.
“There were some very bright people at Hutchie Hutchesons’ Grammar School in Glasgow, the school Turner attended as a child,” he mused, “and there were probably a couple of other people competing with me to be the brightest boy in the class, but I think when I went to my public school I probably clearly was.
“I wanted to be the Prime Minister…Everyone who knew me when I went to Cambridge knew that was my assumption.”
Nothing like modesty to smooth salve on a raw wound, is there?
CROW’S NEST
Calling all daredevils in the vicinity of Canary Wharf: a disabled sailing charity called the Jubilee Sailing Trust is offering Wharf workers the chance to participate in a record-breaking attempt aboard one of its ships, the 65m vessel Tenacious.
The task at hand is to recruit people to climb to the button of the mast, 123ft above deck – and they need at least 40 willing volunteers in order to beat a record achieved in Southampton earlier this year.
Participants, who need to raise at least £150 in sponsorship to take part, should go to www.jst.org.uk for more details.
GOING CONKERS
And from the daring to the more sedate, the NSPCC City Conker Cup is also currently recruiting for its annual championship, to be held on 15 October this year at the appropriately-named Loose Cannon Club on Allhallows Lane.
BBC commentator John Inverdale will be presiding over the conker matches, which involve teams of three engaging in battle to win the Conker Trophy. City firms including Smith & Williamson, Lovells and K&L Gates have already signed up at www.nspcc.org.uk/conkers