Merging two companies is not exactly Mission Impossible, but some of the more paranoid City penpushers are behaving as if it is.
They are buying mobile telephones that include a voice- encryption device costing £1,300. It clips on to the bottom of most phones, scrambling voice conversations. They can only be understood if the receiver has a similar device and a special code.
Mobile-phone calls are vulnerable to interception. Eavesdroppers have been using fake base stations to listen in to whatever conversations they choose.
Spymaster, the London surveillance specialist, created the Crypt-a-Cell gadget after receiving a huge number of requests from bankers worried that their secret merger discussions could be jeopardised by rivals who might tap into their mobile-phone conversations.
Now they can sit and talk on the beach in the south of France secure in the knowledge that the details of their wheeler-dealing will be known only to the fishes in the sea and all the Eurotrash tanning themselves on nearby sun loungers.
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Spymaster’s Jeremy Marks says he has sold out of Crypt-a-Cells. “We are busy making some more. Our customers are not the military but investment banks worried about security. Telephone systems are very vulnerable, and it is a big issue for them. We have sold more than 170 of the devices in the past three months.”
Paper tigers cool off
TWO of the unlikeliest media moguls could be spending some of their summer hols together after a judge ordered them into mediation last week.
Conrad Black, owner of The Daily Telegraph, and Richard Desmond, owner of Express Newspapers, have until the end of September to see if they can kiss and make up in a libel action that has been rumbling on over the past few months.
Black has taken the action against Express Newspapers claiming he and Hollinger International, his company, were “grossly libelled” by two articles that appeared in the Sunday Express finance section last November.
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They alleged that TD Securities, Hollinger’s banker in Toronto, had taken away a £220m loan and credit facility because it was concerned about the debt at Hollinger, all of which the company denies.
The case has rumbled on, but last week Express’s lawyers asked for a stay to see if they could mediate. Master Leslie, the High Court official, agreed to a two-month stay in proceedings, giving the two parties until the end of September to see if they can reach some kind of agreement.
Industry insiders say this is about as likely as Page 3 girls appearing in The Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Express’s media page getting more than a half-decent story.
Sound view of fraudsters
IN most police interview rooms the microphones that record whatever is said hang from the ceiling. This is not for acoustic or even aesthetic reasons but for anger management. At times of stress it is the electronic equipment that bears the brunt — it is amazing how much damage a 60-minute cassette can inflict on an officer’s head. But the Serious Fraud Office, whose officers’ approach is more “Ford Open Prison” than “Wormwood Scrubs”, don’t get the same sort of problems with their blue-chip crooks. It wants to break with procedure with its “better class of criminal” and put its microphones on the desks.
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Coup for man who bought views to loos
THE former Tory MP John Sykes may have lost his seat but he has found a new way to entertain at the urinals. Sykes, who was well-known as an honourable member, went into business putting video screens in lavatories at bars, clubs and cinemas.
Advertisers are piling into whatever slots they can in what is known in the toilet commercials industry as the 30-second window of golden opportunity. Viewrinals attract a captive audience of 400,000 viewers a month from 150 screens.
Now Sykes has sold his firm, Captive View, to Warner Howard, a hand-dryer company, which wants to insert 100,000 of the screens all over Britain and win the 40m audience — let’s face it, everyone has to go some time.
There is even a female alternative, the Viewloo, for ladies to watch while queuing for a cubicle.
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The Captive View deal is worth about £100,000 with royalties and a profit share, which will help Sykes spend a few pennies.