City Diary: Gotham's latest bear raid has fishy flavour

One Luis Benguerel, a Barcelona-based portfolio manager, told Bloomberg as shares in Gowex tanked by as much as 37pc after Gotham unleashed the hounds: “To me, it’s as if somebody is trying to buy on the cheap.” Surely not.

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Enter stage right, Bob Diamond.

Between his forays into African finance, the former Barclays boss has been busy behind the scenes as chairman of Old Vic Productions (OVP), the theatre group that produces shows such as Billy Elliot and Noel Coward’s Private Lives.

Like Diamond’s investment targets for his Atlas Mara vehicle, however, OVP’s funds have fallen a little short. The group’s latest accounts, for 2013, show a “disappointing” loss of £178,500, after audiences “failed to materialise” for the UK tour of Noises Off. Passion Play, starring Zoe Wanamaker, also “confounded expectations”.

But the show must, as they say in showbiz, go on – so Diamond is staging a comeback (sound familiar?) with a show based on Enid Blyton’s Famous Five children’s adventures. “We are very excited by the prospect,” he writes. Let’s hope it’s a banker.

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When is a CEO’s exit not an exit?

When, just days after confirming his retirement, the oil company’s chairman insists he must remain on the board “in a senior capacity” to protect relations with Kurdistan’s Ministry of Natural Resources.

Diary means, of course, Gulf Keystone’s colourful leader Todd Kozel. But it seems shareholders resent being strongly urged to “vote for Todd’s re-election” at this month’s annual meeting by chairman Simon Murray. “Why does Mr Murray believe that Gulf Keystone will not prosper without Mr Kozel?” queried one.

Given that Murray was schooled in the “iron bar discipline” of the French Foreign Legion, where he once carried the severed heads of three Arab terrorists back to base camp in a sack, Diary suggests investors take his word for it.

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The future’s bright for Steven Day, the former communications chief at mobile phones operator Orange.

After stepping down from the board of Orange’s parent company EE at the end of last year, the man responsible for bringing those Kevin Bacon ads to the nation’s TV screens has resurfaced as non-executive chairman at a new telecoms consultancy, called Up Communications.

Its first client? Orange – or, at least, the company’s retail and development arm, Orange Innovation.

Talk about having a good network …

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Someone is kindly managing David Haigh’s Twitter feed as the ex-Leeds United director spends his sixth week in a Dubai jail on fraud charges .

Mr Haigh’s account yesterday posted a link to an online petition asking the Foreign Office to review his case, claiming he was “arrested under subterfuge” and is “suffering health issues”.

This ball needs to get rolling. The “Justice for David Haigh” e-petition so far has just 922 signatures.

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harriet.dennys@telegraph.co.uk

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