New candidate for the coolest job in the world
Sajid Javid was singing for his supper at this week’s annual meeting of the BPI, the music industry’s trade body. The culture secretary emphasised the need for robust copyright enforcement and said that he had written to Google to ask it to stop directing people searching for music to illegal websites. He seems to have settled into the job and was beaming as he was presented with a framed copy of a CD of the best of U2.
“My kids think I have the coolest job in the world,” he said after boasting that he had been able to score tickets to see Sam Smith at Somerset House. He joked that he had offered to take the kids on a tour of the Monetary Policy Committee meetings in his previous role at the Treasury: “They just weren’t interested.”
This decision simply sucks
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Pam Ayres has taken to Twitter to deride the new EU rules pulling the plug on vacuum cleaners with motors bigger than 1,600 watts as part of an energy-efficiency drive. The self-styled “versifier and comedienne” has composed a poem, entitled the Tragic Ballad of the Scrapped Vacuum Cleaner, that comfortably fits within 140 characters:
“James Dyson! You who call the shots!
Please help, I have too many watts!
Banned, discarded in the rain,
The EU means I suck in vain.”
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Money in the bank
Well, that was quick. No sooner had Eric Cantor announced in June that he was quitting as Republican majority leader in the US Congress, having suffered a surprise defeat in a primary election, than speculation began swirling about which Wall Street bank was most likely to snap up this friend of the banking industry. Sure enough, Moelis & Co, the boutique investment bank, said yesterday that he would be joining as vice-chairman.
Regulatory filings suggest that he will be paid $3.4 million in cash and stock for his first two years, a considerable bump from his $193,400 congressional salary. The company will also reimburse him for the “reasonable cost” of a New York City apartment for his first 12 months.
If he can pull that off, he’s worth every cent.
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Business big shot
Name Liz Airey
Age 54
Position Chairwoman, Jupiter Fund Management
Liz Airey’s celebrations at being named as Jupiter’s new chairwoman are likely to be a little muted, seeing as Jamie Dundas, her highly regarded predecessor, has had to step down because of a serious illness.
Nevertheless, her anointment at the helm of the FTSE 250 fund management group, effective as from Monday, caps a career that began in banking, when she was a corporate financier at SG Warburg, and swells the ranks of women in Britain’s boardrooms.
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Ms Airey, who has been Jupiter’s senior independent director for just over four years and joined shortly before its listing on the stock market, will also chair the nominations committee. She is a former finance director at Monument Oil and Gas and chairwoman of the Unilever UK pension fund.