IDENTITY CRISIS AT FUND VETERAN JOHN DUFFIELD’S NEW VENTURE
JOHN Duffield really hasn’t been too lucky of late, has he?
The veteran New Star Asset Management founder established a new venture called Hyde Park Asset Management back in April, as first revealed by yours truly, but soon had to ditch the moniker after hedge fund marketing firm Hyde Park Investment enlisted its legal heavies to persuade him to choose another name.
Duffield eventually decided upon the equally genteel Brompton Asset Management, and thought nothing more of the matter. Until now, that is, since Canadian investment firm Brompton Funds Management (are you spotting a pattern here?) has come out of the woodwork with its own spirited response.
“As Mr Duffield is operating in the same business as we are and using similar names we believe there could be significant confusion on the part of investors between his products and ours,” a spokesman over in Canada informs me.
“We will be talking to our legal counsel about pursuing options to stop his use of the Brompton name.”
I call John Jay, the former New Star business development director who runs the new venture, to break the dim news.
“This isn’t something I’d like to comment on,” is his smooth response.
Let’s hope poor Duffield never had this kind of bother naming his own kids.
BASE INSTINCT
A lesson on how to put down the female sex, courtesy of shamelessly self-promoting former Anglo American deputy chairman Graham Boustred. The verbose 84-year-old gave an interview to South Africa’s Business Day earlier this week, laying into current Anglo boss Cynthia Carroll for daring to be a woman in charge.
“Do you know why it’s difficult to find a female CEO?” he roared. “It’s because most women are sexually frustrated. Men are not, because they can fall back on call girls, go to erectile dysfunction clinics. If you have a CEO who’s sexually frustrated she can’t act properly.”
This, coming from the same man who reckons “the best thing that could happen to Anglo is if I come back”. With that kind of misogynistic attitude, The Capitalist would beg to differ.
LOTTERY OF LIFE
An update on the progress of the enterprising City boy who recently set up a competition to win his lifestyle, offering tickets at just £20 a pop for the chance to win his £1.1m mansion, £160,000 Aston Martin DBS and £200,000 luxury motor boat.
At the time, Andrew Paul was still holding down a job as a trader at Japanese bank Nomura, though I hear from him, speaking from a champagne-drenched celebratory party yesterday at the house, that he has quit his job to concentrate on the new venture, www.winanewlife.com.
“It was turning into pretty much a full-time job anyway,” he tells me.
Still, Paul shouldn’t be too down: with up to 200,000 entries allowed, the project could net him over £2.5m (minus legal fees, VAT and his mortgage) – and I hear he’s also had offers for future revenue streams in the form of numerous people who want to sell him their houses in order to put them up as the next grand prize.
However, he’s now in two minds about whether to keep or sell the business after the competition.
“Selling the business would make sense,” he reasons. “I kind of miss the buzz of the City…”
OUT ON THE LINKS
Up to Scotland on Tuesday for the Gary Player Invitational golf tournament at the Archerfield Links in East Lothian, in association with City PM.
Player, whose charity foundation has raised over $30m to date for underprivileged children through such events, was on hand to welcome his guests, who included 6’10” rugby star Martin Bayfield, snooker legel Dennis Taylor and tennis ace Jeremy Bates.
And while back in the City, many continued to toil under the weight of the financial crisis, several more fun-loving types from law firm Davenport Lyons, broker Investec, Virgin Money and Verizon made it all the way up north of the border for the golf – and the boozy black tie gala after-party. That’s the spirit.
MONEY GRABBER
An email arrives, plugging a piece of art by sculptor Lynn Todd, who’s commenting on “the injustice of the excesses of the banking industry”.
Strange, then, that the sculpture in question – which to The Capitalist’s admittedly untrained eye looks like garishly painted plastic hands sticking out of a cake of press cuttings and coins – is up for sale at £32,000.
“The price is an integral part,” Todd informs us. “Its important the audience is shocked by the high sale price – I want to stimulate the same emotion the public have felt in relation to unnecessary and excessive bonuses in the banking industry.” And here we were thinking that the whole stunt was about shameless gold-digging.